The Book of Dobby Reboot: Per Arcana ad Astra
by Doghead Thirteen
Summary: Rewriting the Book of Dobby. Harry Potter has had enough, and now - with a little help from his friends - he's decided to bring the fight to the Death Eaters in a way they cannot understand. Turn out those lights! Don't you know there's a war on?
1. Trailer

**-/- Hairy Scottish Git Productions Presents -/-**

(Exterior, night. HERMIONE GRANGER staggers into shot, face streaked with blood, semi-naked from waist up and half-carried by MILLICENT BULSTRODE. They are flanked by GINNY WEASELY, NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM, and RON WEASELY with LUNA LOVEGOOD on his shoulders; all are pale and shaking, and Luna is clutching a Sten gun as if it is her only link with reality. A distant but growing aero-engine drone is audible in background. Pan left, revealing the six are at the edge of the rise at the bottom of Hogwarts' lawn; beneath the rise is a sea of countless DEMENTORS.)

Ron (dazed): What's that noise?

Hermione (exultant, jerking her head up): It's the sound of freedom!

(A Lancaster bomber, flying at extremely low altitude, bursts across the edge of the Forbidden Forest, it's bomb-bays open; as the bombs begin to land among the Dementor horde cut to interior, day.)

(A dark-haired young man, dressed in shabby work clothes, is leaning against a network of metal frames and spars, his head hanging.)

VOICEOVER: They tried to destroy him.

Man: I never asked for this.

VOICEOVER: His enemies are numerous.

Man: I only wanted to be Harry. Just Harry.

VOICEOVER: His position, tenuous.

Man: I never wanted this boy-who-lived stuff.

VOICEOVER: His allies, scarce.

Man: I never wanted destiny.

VOICEOVER: His followers, bizarre.

Man: Seems that was too much to ask for.

VOICEOVER: His plan, audacious.

(He raises his head, revealing ice-cold green eyes and a flash of a scar on his forehead: this is HARRY POTTER.)

Harry: I'm done being pushed. Being controlled.

(Tighten focus on his face.)

Harry: It's time to push back.

(Cut to black. Cue vaguely monastic sounding chant in background.)

**-/-A Doghead13 fanfic-/-**

(Lancaster bomber slowly sweeps left across screen, wiping to interior view of a cavernous aircraft hanger; we see that the Lanc has just rolled out of the hanger.)

Harry: We can't win this war Dumbledore's way. He'll sit on his hands and do nothing until we've all followed poor bloody Cedric.

(Camera pans forwards, between dozens of aircraft, some incomplete.)

Harry: The Ministry, they're just as much of a problem as Voldemort.

(As the camera continues, the aircraft it passes are less and less complete, until it reaches the bare bones of a gargantuan airframe, resting in cradles, so vast it makes those around it seem toy-like. Harry is leaning against the port side of the nose; several others are standing, listening to him, their backs turned towards the camera.)

Harry: I can't do this alone. I need all of you.

(One of his audience – a short, dark-haired girl dressed in pitch-black Wizarding robes, makes as if to speak; he cuts her off with a raised hand.)

Harry: We have to hit them in a way they cannot understand, predict, or defend against.

Dark-Haired Girl: Harry-

Harry: As long as we leave one Death Eater alive, they'll come back. We all know this. We've seen it before. We've all lost family, or friends... or lovers, Cho.

Dark-Haired Girl: Cedric-

Harry: I know.

(Another member of the audience takes a step forwards; a short boy with mousey brown hair.)

Boy: But what can we do? I've seen what they've got out there-!

Harry: I know.

Boy: What don't you know?

(Harry smiles. Cut to several DEATH EATERS, cautiously making their way across a thickly overgrown field; one of them vanishes in a puff of dust and flying fragments; zoom camera towards a small green metal box marked 'Face towards enemy' a split second before it too detonates.)

Harry: A lot of things.

(Another explosion, kicking up a cloud of oily smoke, wipes the screen to black.)

**-/-The Book of Dobby: Per Arcana ad Astra-/-**

(Spitfire sweeps up across screen, wiping to top view of three Spits in close formation, racing along only a few dozen feet from the ground, their cannons spluttering. Rapid-fire shots of aircraft dogfighting against broom-riders, an RAF Tornado chasing after an ornately-decorated Stuka dive-bomber, a section of Diagon Alley dissolving into fire and flying rubble, a flamethrower tank opening up on a seemingly endless horde of Dementors, Guards at the gates of Buckingham Palace in full regalia fighting side-by-side with house elves against something unseen that's throwing deadly bolts of green light, a belly view from a heavy bomber as it begins it's run, an entire wing of Hogwarts Castle in flames, finally wipe to Hermione Granger, pale and visibly shaken, seated in the cockpit of a Lancaster in flight, bags under her eyes, a trail of half-dried blood down to her chin from her nose, semi-naked from the waist up, a look of wonder on her face, and her hand resting on the clocks.)

Hermione (soft): She came for me...

(Cut back to Harry, still leaning against the airframe. He's smiling slightly. Luna Lovegood is now standing one side of him, Hermione Granger the other, with Millicent Bustrode and Ron Weasely bracketing them; Sirius Black and Remus Lupin are visible, holding power-spanners, peering out of the partially-built airframe, the Weasely twins are now watching from the far side of said airframe along with Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasely, and there are dozens upon dozens of khaki-clad house elves seemingly everywhere, some of them holding Sten guns, others holding tools.)

Harry: But one thing I know for certain is how we're going to win this thing.

(Cut to black.)

-/-Coming Soon-/-


	2. Chapter 1

**This ain't no self-insert fic.**

**This ain't no slash fic neither.**

**This is the Book of Dobby.**

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"_I would say to the House as I said to those who have joined this government: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs — Victory in spite of all terror — Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival."_

Prime Minister Winston Churchill,

May 13th 1940.

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In hindsight, it was entirely Colin Creevy's fault, for all that it all began very simply, with an elf getting bored.

The elf in question – a house-elf named Dobby – was, by house-elf standards, extremely weird. Many of his kin would, when they thought nobody was listening, say he was touched in the head; from when he was only six inches tall he had the strangest ideas; he always seemed to be searching for something, yet even he did not know what it was.

It was not until he first heard of a Bigger called Harry Potter that he seemed to at least start to find that something.

But he was still restless. Why, he was actually glad to be clothed and lose his home, and with it the heart of his power!

Sensible elves shook their heads. That Dobby, they said, him is comes to a bad end one of these days, you is marks my words.

But he didn't. Instead, he found something to believe in, and he found that something – or, at least, the nucleus of it – among Colin Creevy's possessions.

Colin was an unashamed geek. His favourite possession was his camera. He played AD&D and Warhammer 40,000. He spent entirely too much time on the Sega Megadrive. He knew all the combos for Street Fighter II, played with Star Wars action figures, and possessed a full set of the Akira manga; he even spoke fluent Klingon.

He was also that fairly unusual sort of nerd who doesn't give a flying fuck what anyone thinks of it all; he unashamedly quoted sound effects from old Tuvok comics, and could clearly explain how to calculate one's THAC0 (and what it was good for) in less than five minutes.

Thus it was that the mound of books that occupied his quarter of his Hogwarts dorm was peculiar to say the least. Isaac Asimov jammed in next to half a dozen Monster Manuals, with a Star Trek technical manual next along, followed by a copy of Rogue Trader, and next to that half a dozen Biggles books, with a copy of Akira book two balanced on top, closely followed by by '2001: A Space Odyssey', with a couple of old issues of Dragon magazine propping the whole mound up. Heaps of White Dwarfs, AD&D modules, polyhedral dice, old character sheets, copies of New Scientist and a dog-eared copy of Neuromancer; three Dragonriders books, a round dozen Discworld books, and a great wobbly pile of photograpy books – and that's not even getting anywhere near the nightmare tangle that was his schoolbooks.

He was the Dungeon Master of the first roleplaying campaign ever held at Hogwarts.

Thus it was that, when a colossally bored Dobby sloped past Mr Creevery Sir's room in search of something to do, the maniacal elf's eyes were rapidly drawn to that great big wobbly pile of books.

Bad things, it was so boring. Since Miss Grangy Ma'am had stopped her clothes-making, the Hogwarts house-elves had seemed to regard it as their sworn duty to keep Gryffindor Tower absolutely spotless at all times, on top of doing such a superb job of cleaning the castle that Dobby felt like a spare broom. Why, he hardly got to pick up so much as a crumb! Only selective application of physical violence had got the blighters to leave Mr Harry Potter Sir's part of the fourth-year boys' dorm to him, and Mr Harry Potter Sir was a very tidy person who cleaned up after himself.

Dobby sighed, selected an armload of books, and popped away to his favourite sulking place – in other words, on top of Mr Harry Potter Sir's bed.

He considered the pile of books he'd grabbed. One was big, the others weren't so big.

He took a close look at the big one.

It was hardbound and somewhat dog-eared. It's cover showed a picture of lots of men in strange armour using weird wands to cast fire spells at unseen enemies, surmounted by the words, 'Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader'.

Dobby shrugged, and began to read, rapidly becoming completely absorbed. Two hours later, he carefully put the big book down and picked up one of the small ones. Half an hour after that, he was sporting a maniac grin; fifteen minutes later and he was giggling. Giggling became cackling as he ploughed on into book after book, and as the students were being let out the last class of the day, he was back to Colin's room for more of these absolutely fascinating books.

Indeed, Colin Creevy's fault. Little bugger shouldn't have stacked Biggles with 40k.

Not that anyone saner than Dobby would have synthesized what he read into what he did.

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**Disclaimer: Turn out those lights! Don't you know there's a war on?**

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**The Holy Testament of Dobby.**

**Per Arcana ad Astra**

**A Doghead13 fanfic**

**Written & produced by Calum J 'Doghead13' Wallace**

**Preread by the CaerAzkaban Yahoo group.**

**Brought to you by Hairy Scottish Git Productions, GMBH**

**Dedicated to those incredible people who spent the best part of the 1940's saving the world – and to everyone who's followed in their footsteps since.**

**This is not a drill.**

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**Chapter 1: Dare to Dream.**

**(In which seeds are sown, and find fertile ground.)**

When Colin Creevy arrived in his dorm, he was unsurprised but annoyed to find that someone had tidied his books.

He was one of those messy people who, despite their stuff being a horrific mess, can immediately put his hand on any given item of said stuff without even looking. He'd long ago worked out that alphabetizing his books was a bad idea, as he was somewhat dyslexic, but if something was where he'd left it, he had no problem finding it.

Muttering darkly, he pulled the books off the bookshelf and stacked them back in a suitably random muddle, pausing to glance at each cover so he'd know where they all were.

Halfway through, he paused, checked over the heap, and started getting annoyed. His copy of Len Deighton's 'Bomber' was missing.

"Damn it, who's been pinching my books?"

"Dobby is not pinches them, Dobby is just borrows them, Mr Colerin Creevery Sir."

Spinning round, Colin found himself looking at that mad house-elf who was always hanging around Harry.

"Does yous," the elf began, drawing in a deep breath, "Know where to be getting bookses about the airyplaneses?"

"... whaa?!" Colin blankly asked.

"The airyplaneses!" Dobby repeated, becoming quite irate. "How is they works?"

"Um, I think this'd be a good place to start." Colin replied, feeling a bit faint as he fished a book out of the wobbly stacks.

The book was a fat, freindly-looking hardback, and on it's cover was printed, in fat, friendly-looking letters, 'The Way Things Work'. He'd brought it in a futile attempt to explain to his mates how cameras work.

Dobby nodded solemnly, accepted the book, and popped away.

Colin very slowly shook his head, and turned his attention back to the absolute disarray that had been his books. Someone had definitely been at them; who the blazes was going to leave 40K, half a dozen Biggles books, Spike Milligan's 'Rommel? Gunner who?', three AD&D splat books, and Len Deighton's 'Bomber' in a neat stack in the middle of the chaos he called a bookshelf?

And more to the point, what exactly was that mad house-elf doing reading 40K, half a dozen Biggles books, 'Rommel? Gunner who?, three AD&D splat books and 'Bomber'?

Thinking about it a bit more, he decided he didn't want to know. So he sorted the books back into their proper mess, and headed down the common room to try to do his homework.

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Two hours later, arriving back at his bed, Colin was less than pleased to find Dobby waiting for him again. This time, the mad elf was impatiently drumming his fingers on the headboard.

"What, you again?" Colin groaned.

"Where is youse finds the airyplaneses?" Dobby requested. "It is being very importerant that Dobby is has closer lookses."

Colin groaned, listed off the handful of places he knew where one could find aeroplanes (places called Heathrow and Gatwick in particular) sighed with relief when the elf disappeared, messed the books up again, and started attempting to get some sleep.

Unreasonably early in the morning, he was woken by an irate elf kicking him in the ear.

"Youse is being a very very very very silly person, Mr Colerin Creevery Sir!" Dobby snapped.

"Oh great, what do you want?"

"Youse is not saying where Dobby is finding the proper airyplanses!" the elf snapped. "Dobby is not looks for the Jumbyo Jetses, they is has elektrikital bits that the magics is bees a bit much for and they is not has the guns and bombses! Dobby is looks for Spittyfires and Lancasteraters!"

"Well I dunno, try the Imperial bloody War Museum or the Science Museum or something, now please oh please shove off, I've got double potions tomorrow."

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Time passed. It's one of those things that tend to happen when nobody's keeping track. The Tournament went ahead; Harry remained in the lead by points, with a little help from his friends, IE Hermione and Dobby.

Incidentally, it was Hermione who suggested that he deal with the whole in-the-lake thing in the same way as he'd dealt with the dragon, but this time by summoning a scuba-diving kit. On hearing that suggestion, Dobby had stuck his head over the side of the bed curtains, and offered to 'be finding the ackwylungses for Mr Harry Potter Sir.', an offer that the young wizard had gratefully accepted. Exactly why Colin Creevy hastened the other way whenever he saw Dobby was anyone's guess, but the hyperactive elf had taken to popping up every time Colin reached for his camera, so Harry wasn't complaining.

By the time the third and final task rolled around, the three of them had settled into a vague approximation of a working relationship. Hermione would suggest something, Harry would okay it and add a few more ideas, and Dobby would go ahead and implement it.

It wasn't until, shortly after the final task, the untimely departure of Cedric Diggory from the mortal coil, and the related show-down with Voldemort that Dobby finally plucked up the courage to suggest his big idea, and it came about through chance; Harry was laying, sprawled and disconsolate, on his bed, staring across the room, trying to deal with Cedric getting blown away right in front of him and Mad-Eye not being Mad-Eye and that whole what-the-hell-was-that-business with Fudge, dwelling on being stuck with the damned Dursleys for a couple months, and desperately trying (and failing) to cope, while Dobby was sitting on top of Harry's bed's awning with a large bag of crisps and the most prized part of his small but growing collection of books – a technical manual for the Lancaster bomber.

"Damnit." Harry muttered. "I wish I knew how to win this war..."

There it was. The chance Dobby had been waiting for. "Dobby is having and idea that is maybe being able to be helping Mr Harry Potter Sir with that..."

"Hmm? Oh, hi Dobby. What's the idea?" Harry asked, turning his attention from the wall and glad for the distraction.

"Has you been hearing about the airyplaneses, Mr Harry Potter Sir?" Dobby asked, his voice very serious.

"... whaa?"

"The airyplaneses." Dobby cued. "The big metal birdses of war like what the muggleses is builds. Dobby is, uh, Dobby is not having much work to be doing, so Dobby is researcherating ways that Mr Harry Potter Sir can be blows up the very naughty Mr Mouldyvorts, and Dobby is thinking that elfses is being able to be making life very very nasty for the very naughty Mr Mouldyvorts if elfses is builds the Lancasterators and Flying Forterators, Mr Harry Potter Sir."

"... wait, what, you're saying, use like, muggle war machines to fight Voldemort?"

Dobby very rapidly and repeatedly nodded his head.

"That is what Dobby is saying, Mr Harry Potter Sir." he said.

"Like, bomb them?" Harry boggled.

"Yes, Mr Harry Potter Sir, Dobby is thinks elfses is being able to be raining down the explodey wrath on the heads of the naughty persons and makes the very naughty Mr Mouldyvorts go boom."

Harry considered that idea, and realised it was... well, actually rather appealing.

"So... um, do you think it'd work?" he asked.

"Oh yes, Mr Harry Potter Sir. You is seeing, elfses eyes is works different from the Biggerses eyes, and elfses is being able to be seeing the magics, and elfses is always knowing where the wizardses is being. But elfses is not being able to be crossing the wardses unless Biggerses who is being keyed to the wardses is saying that elfses is allowed to, but the wardses is only comes up to a few hundred of the feets, and the bomberers is flies much much higher than that, Dobby is thinking that the elfses is being able to be drops the bombses on where the bad peoples is being from above if the elfses is having the airyplaneses."

Harry nodded, a deeply thoughtful expression on his face.

"Hmm..." he said.

"Dobby is just needing the word, and Dobby is begins the proceresses."

Harry nodded again.

"Dobby," he said, "What can I do to help?"

Dobby looked incredibly surprised.

"Oh, Dobby is knows Mr Harry Potter Sir is truly being a wonderful and magniffycent wizard!" the little elf cried, leaping down from the awning and hugging Harry's legs.

"Calm down, calm down, it's nothing big. Look, you're wanting to, well, help me get even with the arsehole who murdered my mum and dad, and, you know, if you're going to help me with that then I really need to help you to help me, right?"

Dobby immediately calmed down, rapidly nodding his head.

"The biggest thing that Dobby is needs to be doing this is the aerodrometary place." he said. "Dobby is being able to be making sure that the muggleses isn't messes about there, but it is all being easier if Dobby is being Mr Harry Potter Sir's elf."

"I don't need a slave, Dobby." Harry said.

"Elfses is not being slaveses!" Dobby snapped, outraged. "You is listens to Miss Grangy Ma'am too much! All elfses is likes Miss Grangy Ma'am because she is cares about elfses, but she is being a very silly person and isn't knowing what it is being like to be being elfses and when Dobby is tries to be telling Miss Grangy Ma'am she is not listens! When elfses is has a kind and noble and mighty master like Mr Harry Potter Sir that is being a very good thing because that is where the elfses is gets most of their power. It is not being nice for elfses who is not has a master because they is being weak elfses who is only has liiiitle bit of the power, and they is not lives very long. When elfses is has a good master they is has lots of the power and they is lives a very long time. Is Mr Harry Potter Sir not knowing how very very very very very very lots of the power wizards who is doing the apperatering when they is little is having? Why, Mr Harry Potter Sir is having so much of the power that if all the elfses in the world was being Mr Harry Potter Sir's elfses Mr Harry Potter Sir is not even notices liiitle bit of power that Mr Harry Potter Sir's elfses is shares!"

"I'm not that powerful, Dobby. Why, it usually takes me an age to get a spell right."

"That is because Mr Harry Potter Sir is has so much of the power to be keeping the controlleration of." Dobby patiently explained. "It is being more difficult to be controllerating the ocerean than the squirty-pipe, no?"

"... are you serious?"

"No, Mr Seerius Padfeets Black Sir is being Seerius. Dobby is being Dobby."

Harry gave Dobby a dubious look. "That joke was bad the first time Padfoot made it... you really mean, well, I've got that much, uh, magic I guess?"

"Well, yes Mr Harry Potter Sir, you is has lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of the power. Dobby is not thinking Dobby is ever seeing a wizard that is having so much of the power before, and that is why all elfses is seeing that Mr Harry Potter Sir is being a Great Wizard."

"... right. Um, yeah, if you kinda, you know, start doing this aeroplanes thing, I just, well, I gotta go think for a while."

"Dobby is doing this for you, Mr Harry Potter Sir!"

And Dobby vanished with a pop.

A few minutes passed with Harry staring blankly at the wall and thinking thoughts about things that explode, and then Ron Weasely wandered in.

"Hey mate, are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, I'm just... having an incredibly surreal day."

Harry suddenly stood bolt upright.

"Ron, I gotta talk to the twins." he said.

"... riiight." Ron said, looking slightly alarmed. "I'll uh, just go find 'em."

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It took him fifteen minutes of frantic searching to track his identical-bookend brothers down. The two were sprawled around in the Gryffindor common room, not doing much of anything.

"Er, Fred, George..."

"Ronniekins." said Twin A.

"What's up?" asked Twin B.

"Harry's wanting to talk to you two, and I dunno why but he looked kinda nutters." Ron said. "He's in his room. Um..."

The twins gave each other meaningful looks and, their interest piqued, headed upstairs.

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"You wanted to talk to us?" Fred – at least, Harry was pretty sure it was Fred since he was wearing a jumper with a G on the front – asked.

"At least, so we've heard." Presumably-George provided.

"So, what gives?" the two of them chorused.

Harry paused, trying to work out how to parse this.

"I... guys, me and a... friend of mine, well, we've been thinking about how to really strike back against Voldemort."

Fred and George shared a matching wince.

"Okay," George asked,

"So where," Fred added,

"Do we come in?" they chorused.

"Well, I'm going to need someone who's really good at making things explode."

The twins shared one of those unspoken-communication glances twins are so famed for, then both of them nodded firmly.

"Harry,"

"Buddy,"

"Pal,"

"Slightly-weird sorta-extra-brother,"

"If you'll finance our experiments,"

"Count us in." they stereoed.

Harry nodded, fished the bag containing his Triwizard winnings out of his robes, and handed it to them.

"That's a thousand Galleons." he said. "Will that help you get set up?"

"Bloody Hell, Harry!"

"That's the bloody Triwizard winnings, innit?"

Harry nodded jerkily. Fred and George glanced at each other, then back at Harry.

"Well," Said Fred, "I think you've just hired yourself the Weasley twins."

"What's the plan?" George asked.

Harry raised a finger, scarpered through to Colin Creevy's room, selected a book from the big wobbly pile, hurried back through, and dumped it on the bed. A minute or so of paging through later, he handed the open book to the twins, and tapped a finger on a specific photograph – one he'd seen when he glanced over Colin's shoulder to see what Colin was reading a couple months ago. It was taken from the underside of an American bomber during the Second World War, and showed the patterns of explosions on the ground far below as the planes unloaded ton after ton of high explosives onto the industrial heartland of the Third Reich. The sheer scale of destruction had stuck in his head.

"What's that?" George, or at least the twin wearing a jumper marked F, asked.

"Those little grey squares are buildings." Harry said. "Big ones."

"Bloody hell..." the other twin murmured.

"You guys have a read of that book. It's about how the muggles fight wars. I think it's time to show Voldemort's lot what a real war is like."

"Harry,"

"Buddy,"

"Pal,"

"Slightly-weird bloody scary sorta-extra-brother," As the twins twin-spoke, they'd been flicking through the book.

"You sure about this?" they stereoed.

"Well, not really," Harry said, "But I am sure I want to make Death Eaters just plain old dead, and do it in a way they can't understand. You saw Cedric. What I'm wondering is, who's next? Is it gonna be me or you in the coffin next? Or Hermione? Or your parents? Or your sister? I know he's gonna be after me again. I got away this time – he can't let there be a next time, or his followers are going to start thinking he's getting weak. And that means anyone close to me is in danger. What I want – no, need – to do is scare them even worse than they scare everyone else."

The twins gave each other a meaningful glance, then nodded.

"We're in."

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"So... what do you think?"

Hermione didn't reply for a long moment, her face falling into a frown.

"Harry... are you sure about this?" she asked.

"Yeah." Harry told her. "I mean, I'm not sure if it'll work, but... God, it's better than just, you know, doing nothing. And you've always been the brains of, well, you know, us. Dobby was dead serious about this. I... Hermione, it's gonna be real bad. That bastard murders people for laughs! For pity's sake, everyone's scared to say his stupid made-up name! I... Hermione, I think we should do something that scares him just as much as he scares, you know, ordinary decent wizards and witches. And, well, you gotta hand it to muggles, they're dead good at blowing stuff up."

"What do you mean?"

"Think about the Manhattan Project. Nukes, Hermione. If that isn't good at making stuff explode, I don't know what is."

Hermione considered that.

"Harry... are you sure this is a good idea?"

"No, I'm not. I dunno if I'll ever be sure this is a good idea. You can't really know if something works unless you've tried it. But... well, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make sure no other little boy ever has to grow up stuck someplace like at the Dursleys."

Hermione didn't reply for a long time, and for a while Harry was worried she was going to freak.

Then she smiled.

"My uncle's in the RAF." she said. "He flies Tornadoes. My other uncle died in the Falklands. Dad's the black sheep of the family because he's not in the military. I... Harry, y'know, I think we can do this. If you-know-who wins, I'm going to be as bad off as Jews were in Germany in 1940... and, well, I'll do whatever it takes to make sure that never happens."

"You and me both, Hermione. You and me both." Harry grinned a bit. "I mean, this world would be a whole lot stupider if you weren't in it, and it's already pretty bloody stupid so we can't have that."

She hugged him, giving him a face-full of frizzy brown hair.

Someone chose that exact moment to let out a polite cough, and they jumped apart, Harry whirling round to face the door with his hand on his wand.

Millicent Bulstrode was standing on the threshold of the abandoned classroom with a worried look on her face.

"What?" Harry snapped.

"Oi've 'eard folks sayin'," the hefty lass said, "That yer settin' up in direct opposition fer ye-know-'oo."

"What if I am?" Harry warily asked.

"Er, are ye recruitin'? Coz iff'n Oi'm gonna be workin' fer a Dark Lord, Oi want it ta be a Dark Lord wot ain't roight wanker."

Seeing the two of them fail to respond to this, Millicent took a cautious step into the room and closed the door.

Then she knelt.

"Oi'm straight-E in all o' me classes but 'Erbology an' Potions, an Oi'v an O in me 'Erbology." she said. "Oi dunno about much muggle stuff wot ain't tractors, but Oi know one enda an engine from t'other an' Oi know where ye can hit tha supply lines, roight? Oi kin take care o' beasts, Oi kin duel wiv tha besta 'em, an' Oi'm willin' ta learn wotever ye need me ta learn. Uh, Master, please allow me ta serve ye."

Harry glanced at Hermione. She looked worried.

"Are you prepared to take my Mark?" he asked, firing a shot into the blue.

Millicent nodded rapidly.

"Whatevva ye want, Master." she said. Then she grinned a bit. "Oi just don't wanna be on neither o' tha sides wot're gonna lose this fing."

"Are you willing to swear, on your magic and your life, that you will never betray me?"

Millicent raised one hand.

"Oi, Millicent Bulstrode, hereby swear, on me magic an' me life, ta ferever serve me Lord 'Arry Potter, an' never ta betray 'im, no matter what it might cost me, fer as long as Oi got breath in me body. An' may tha Dementors 'ave me soul if Oi tell a lie."

There was a bright blue flash from her aura as the oath took effect.

"... okay, you're in." Harry said, and then paused, waiting for a reaction. "Um, you can stand up now."

Millicent rose to her feet. Now he actually took notice of her, she was a pretty impressive young lady. Six foot tall if she was an inch, nearly three feet across the shoulders, her hands like shovels, and although nobody would ever call her beautiful, she looked like the old-school farmer's wife – the sort of woman who might not look astonishing in an evening dress, but she'll keep the cattle well fed, the children brought up straight and true, the tractor running, and the crops growing, when the menfolk are away to war.

She looked fit to arm-wrestle Arnold Schwarzenegger and win, or punch out a charging Aberdeen Angus bull for that matter.

"Thankyou, Millicent." he said, and she looked very surprised. "You're the first person who's ever trusted me this much."

Millicent looked positively pole-axed.

"Beggin' yer pardon m'lord, but thas 'orse-shoite." she told him. "Miss 'Ermione trusts ye that much, an' it'd take a right berk ta miss it. Same goes fer that mad elf wot they Malfoys lost t'other year. An' there's other folks wot ain't missed it. Them DeLacour birds, them Patils, them ain't missed it. An' there's this bird t'year under us in t' Claws wot ain't missed it. Wossname, Luna. An' others Oi can't name offa tha top a' me 'ed. Ye 'ave folks wot reckon yer tha feller wot's gonna win this fing. It ain't tha 'Edmaster wot's gonna win this fing – 'ee trusts Snape, an' sooner or later that's gonna get 'im inna 'ole in t'ground, ye mark me word. It ain't ya-know-'oo, 'ee is too frickin' dim an' sooner or later a body's gonna put a knife in t'back a' 'im, an' that's iff'n ye don't blow 'im ta bits furst. So, well, beggin' yer pardon m'lord, but sensible folks loike me an' 'Ermione ain't trustin' them berks."

"The question on my mind at this stage," Hermione said, "Is, is there anyone else here at the castle we can trust with this?"

"The Weasely twins are in." Harry said. "And so's Dobby. I haven't talked to Ron yet." Harry stopped, suddenly realising how few friends he really had. "Look, we don't have much time before it's, well, summer and I'm stuck at the damn Dursleys."

"What's a Dursley, m'lord?" Millicent asked.

"My so-called relatives." Harry told her. "Don't worry, I can handle it."

"You shouldn't have to 'handle' being stuck with those... those... those sorry excuses for human beings!" Hermione emphatically stated.

"Yeah, but how'd I get out of there anyway?" Harry asked her. "I tried to get Dumbledore to let me just, you know, stay at the Burrow and, well, I don't think he's gonna let me out of Durskaban until right before we've gotta head back here."

"I think I can get a message to Padfoot." Hermione told him.

"Oo's this Padfoot feller, m'lord?" Millicent asked.

"Sorry, but, well, I can't really tell you yet." Harry told her. She surprised him by accepting that with a nod, then he was annoyed at himself for being surprised.

She'd just sworn to take his word for pretty much, well, everything. Talking of which, why had she done that?

"Millicent," he asked, "Where'd you pick up on the rumours about this? I only hit on this today."

The big girl looked a bit embarrassed.

"T'Slytherin 'ouse ain't t'best company fer an 'alf-blood loike meself." she admitted. "Twas th' 'ouse-elves I 'eard about it from; tha mad elf ye got workin' fer ye bin gettin' em stirred up summat fearful fer 'alf t'year. Me ole grandpa were in t'commando regiment in t'war, an' when Oi heard yer elf talkin' about makin' t'bombers fer ye, well, Oi sure as heck don't want t' be on t'receivin' end o' that lil' lot. So Oi got t' thinkin', an' Oi reckoned seein' as how yer close t' 'Agrid, ye'd no be so bothert' about tha lil' scrap o' giant Oi got in me, an' if ye discount t' gibberish an' account for t'exaggeration, tha elf thar's pretty bludy informative on ye. An' there's one thing Oi know fer sure; no wizard wot ever went up against a muggle soldier in t'last 'unnert years came off well, an' only a few a' 'em lived t'tell t'tale."

"So bullets work on wizards." Hermione pounced.

Millicent shook her head.

"An arrer'll loikley be goin' straight through t'finest shield charm in t'world." she said. "An' beggin' yer pardon, Miss 'Ermione, a bullet hits a mite harder'n an arrer. Oi don't know quoite how it works, but me ole grandpa were a muggle-born, an' when t'war 'it, 'ee joined up. Twas when 'ee were servin' in t'Ardennes 'ee ran inta yin o' Grindlewald's followers, an' it come down ter Sten aginst wand. Me ole grandpa shot that man dead through t'wordless shield charm what were strong enuf ter see."

"That'd stop a bludger..." Hermione murmured.

"Aye." Millicent agreed. "Ye-know-'oo skeers me, Miss 'Ermione. But them muggles, they skeers me worse. So soon as I 'eard from good sources ye were plannin' on bringin' a gun te a wand fight, m'lord, Oi knew who'll win this thing."

"I've just realised how to safely get a message to Padfoot, Harry." Hermione said.

"How?" Harry asked.

"Get Dobby to take it."

"Ave an elf," Millicent boggled, "Do an owl's work? Thats..." She stopped suddenly, the gears obviously whirling in her head. "Sweet Merlin... 'oo'd a' thunk it?"

"Thinking the unthinkable," Harry told her, "Is what we do. Well, mostly Hermione does it, I just gawp and think she's bloody brilliant... We'll have to meet up over the summer."

Hermione nodded. "Yeah. Look... Harry, are you sure you're going to be okay at the Dursleys?"

Harry slowly nodded back.

"Trust me." he said. "I'll be fine." He turned back to Millicent. "The first and most important thing we need is a patch of land. It needs to be flat, big enough to use as an airbase, and we need to be able to protect it – keep unwanted people out, defend it from any attacks, stuff like that."

"Oi reckon Oi kin arrange that." Millicent said. "There's a part o' me father's land were used by Bomber Command in t'war, an' me father ain't never done owt with it. Tis still what's left o' tha Air Force buildins' an' aw."

"Sounds good." Harry said. "What about protecting it?

"I'll read up on protective enchantments." Hermione said. "Madam Pince lets me take a few books for light reading over the summer, so..."

"Cool." Harry told her. "I'll be in touch with you as soon as I can, both of you. Let's do this."

Watching her newly-minted master and his best female friend take off to head back to Gryffindor grounds, Millicent slowly shook her head.

"Oi must be out me bludy mind." she muttered, then she remembered her maternal grandfather's haunted eyes as he told that hellish tale about a place called Belsen, and she shuddered.

He knew, and had imparted on his grand-daughter, that man's inhumanity to man knows no limit.

Her paternal grandfather had told her blood-curdling stories that made her realise the same held true for wizard or muggle alike, and her view from the sidelines over the last four years had made it very clear that the only hero available to save the Wizarding World from that hell was a teenage boy named Harry Potter. All Dumbledore ever did was sit in his ivory tower and smile contentedly at his lemon drops. All the Ministry ever did was waffle on; not a man jack of them had ever done an honest day's work. As for Voldemort... no point even thinking about that, if he won the Bulstrodes would be up against the wall right beside the Weaselys.

If she'd known that this was what her biting desire to get off the farm and make something of her life was getting her into when that owl landed on her parents' kitchen table, she'd have told the damn bird to take that letter and shove it right up Dumbledore's arse; maybe her dad had been right and breeding the finest bulls in Britain was enough of an ambition after all.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Colin groaned.

His books had been randomly appearing and disappearing ever since that mad elf got into them, but at least Dobby always put them back when he was done with them.

He at least hoped that the pictorial history of the Second World War he'd received for his birthday from his grandpa would reappear soon.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

"Dobby is has a very very importerant duty." Dobby declared, standing foresquare and proud in the centre of the big Hogwarts kitchen work-table. "But Dobby is not being able to be doing it alone."

This attracted the attention of the elves around him. The students had been onto the train two hours ago, and the elves were having a quiet celebration of another successful year; there had been no big foul-ups, no glitches in the smooth running of the school, no cooking disasters, and no bloody messes; for the first time in several years, they hadn't had any huge crisis's dealing with it all.

Thus, they were a bunch of very accomplished-feeling house-elves just now.

"What is Dobby knows about dutys?" one of them – an elf named Twinky – doubtfully asked.

"Dobby is thinks about that for very much long time." Dobby admitted. "Then the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir is shows Dobby what it is means."

The elves all solemly nodded. As creatures able to see the flow of magic, not one elf among them had any shadow of a doubt that Mr Harry Potter Sir was indeed a Great Wizard. After all, he had far far far far more of that glowy power that the Biggers called the magics than any other wizard any of them had ever seen – nor had they heard of such power since the time of the Four Great Wizardses and Witcheses Founders Sirs and Ma'ams.

"What is the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir knowing about the dutys?" Winky asked, slurring a bit; she'd hit the butterbeer a bit harder than everyone else again.

"There is being a war on." Dobby declared. "We is all knows this. It is going to be being a very bad thing. We is all knows this. The Biggers, they is not knows this. They is not having the flakks or the sercherlightses, they is not having the bomb shelterators and they is leaving their lights on when it is being dark. They is being very very silly and they is going to be getting themselves deaded and where is nice hard-working elfses being then?"

Nobody could answer that; there was a lot of shuffling of feet and glancing at each other to see if anyone knew what to be doing about that.

"The Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir is knowing there is being a war on. The Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir is knowing about the sercherlightses and the flakks. The Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir is turns his lights out when it is being dark so the Nartsery bomberators is not being able to be finding the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir. And the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir is inspires Dobby to be learning of the Raff and the Yoosaarf, and the Spittyfires and the Hurrykanes, and the Musterangs and the Lighternings, and the Lancasterators and the Flying Forteraters, and the Few to whom So Much is oweded by So Many."

The collected elves' ears pricked up. They weren't sure what these things meant, but they were certain that those big words sounded very important indeed.

"What is the Lancasterators being?" Wonky asked.

Dobby smiled ingeniously. That was the question he'd been looking for.

"Youse is comes with Dobby, and Dobby is shows youse something very very very special..."

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Dobby frowned for a moment. They were here at RAF Conningsby to see a very special aircraft; one of only two Lancaster bombers still in airworthy condition, but _PA474 _"City of Lincoln" wasn't parked in her usual hanger.

Then he saw her, and his eyes went the size of Frisbees.

She was at the foot of the runway with her engines idling, and she was just turning into the wind.

"What is we being here to be seeing?" Wanky asked, puzzled.

"Youse is follows Dobby, quick-quick!" he gabbled out, and then popped away to among the scrubland at the head of the runway.

He timed it to perfection. The elves had just appeared and stuck their heads up out of the bushes when, with a distant roar, the Lancaster revved up and began her take-off run. This was even more special than what he'd expected!

"Is this being safe, Dobby?" Twix doubtfully asked.

"Youse is watches very very careful!" Dobby snapped, whipping his stack of hats off as the Lanc gathered pace, seeming to rapidly grow as she powered along the runway.

"Is Dobby being sure about this?" Wonky checked.

"Youse is shutting up!"

The Lancaster's wheels lifted off the tarmac, and there was a clunk, barely audible over the bellow of four Rolls-Royce Merlins, as nearly two hundred house-elf jaws dropped.

The aged war-horse of the sky rose in a leisurely way; she was only at about a hundred feet altitude as she cleared the end of the runway, a great thundering wall of metal and fabric, her props kicking up eddies in the scrub, and the swarm of elves – ever-growing numbers, not all of them Hogwarts elves, others having been attracted to see why so many elves were in a muggle place – stared, transfixed.

"What is that being, Dobby?" Twiglet whispered, his ears wobbling around in sheer awe.

"That is being a Lancasterator." Dobby said, his tone reverential. He hadn't ever seen a bomber actually running before, let alone flying. "That is being the great big stupendymost metal bird of war what is rains the bombses and explodey wrath on the Natserys and the very naughty persons."

The small army of elves shared a solemn nod. Their little hearts were pounding in their chests, blood rushing in their sizeable ears, adrenaline coursing through their veins; out of all of them, only Dobby had ever seen anything even remotely like this before, and he didn't think the Jumbero Jetses quite had the right idea.

This, on the other hand... This was a moment of pure religion to the pointy-headed little chap.

"All elfses is having a very special duty..." he said, gesturing towards the rapidly departing bomber. "The muggleses is not has the bomberses no more. The Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir is needs the bomberses to be punishing the wicked and very naughty Mr Mouldyvorts, but there is not being the Few no more; the Bomberer Boyses is has goed home, and the bomberers is rests in their hangerers. They is needing the elfses to be flying them; thems time of sleeping is being over. This is what we is going to be being doing for the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir; this is being the very special duty what all elfses is having. We is going to be being the Few to whom So Much is oweded by So Many."

"We is does this for the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir." the elves chorused.

They watched the bomber until she had vanished across the horizon, and then they popped away.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

At the same moment aboard the Hogwarts Express, it was a whole different matter; there were no speeches going on, and nobody was having any religious moments, certainly in the compartment currently occupied by a certain trio of Gryffindors. Harry, Hermione and Ron had taken up residence in their usual compartment, and proceeded to share a worried and (in Ron's case) somewhat unnerved silence for most of the trip. Several people had looked in; the Weasely twins, a small blonde Ravenclaw with oddly protruding silver eyes, Ginny, Malfoy, and (to Ron's sincere shock) a polite and somewhat bashful Millicent Bulstrode, who left after exchanging pleasantries.

This uncomfortable silence finally came to an end when Ron excused himself to go to the loo, whereupon Hermione promptly asked the question that'd been bothering her.

"Harry..." She hesitantly began.

"What's up?" Harry asked.

"Um, have you, you know, got a Mark?"

Harry thought about that for a few moments, then shook his head.

"Not yet." he told her.

"Are you going to need me to research it?"

"If you've got time. Security's far more important."

Ron re-entered, and they lapsed back into silence.

Another uncomfortably silent half-hour later, Ron finally opened his trap.

"There's something going on with you two and that Slytherin bird, ain't there?" he asked.

"... yeah." Harry admitted.

Ron nodded glumly.

"Thought so." He grimaced. "I guess I'm okay with you leaving me outta it – I mean, I was a right bloody pratt earlier this year and I guess I can't really blame you for not really trusting me any more, I mean, in your boots I sure wouldn't trust me, I mean, oh bloody hell, y'know what I'm saying, right?"

Hermione looked very surprised. Harry made a pained-looking face.

"It's not that, Ron." he said, even though he knew he was lying and yes, it was that. "It's just – this is big. Really big. When people – especially the bloody Ministry – find out about it, all Hell's gonna break loose, so the less people know the longer we've got to get everything to work."

Ron opened and closed his mouth several times, then nodded.

"I guess I'm okay with that." he said.

"Thanks, mate."

"That's what friends are for, right Harry? Right Hermione?"

"... yeah."

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Back at Hogwarts, now that the students were safely packed off home for the summer, Minerva McGonagall had been expecting at least a few days peace and quiet before anything stupid happened, but within hours of the train departing, one of the Slytherin curtains had gone missing, someone had lifted the big pot of waterproof ink usually kept in Flitwick's classroom, Filch was raging about a large portion of his paint supplies vanishing, Dumbledore couldn't find any of his belts, and someone had cut a hole the size of a dinner plate in the breastplate of one of the suits of armour.

And now Snape was complaining that someone had pinched his favourite gimp mask.

Minerva wasn't quite sure what a gimp mask actually was, or why the complaint had nearly made Dumbledore choke on a lemon drop, but she was adamant that she didn't want to know.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

"Home sweet Hell." Harry murmured.

As soon as he'd arrived at Number 4, he'd been frog-marched into his room with his trunk and Hedwig's cage in tow, and the door had been slammed and locked behind him. In some ways, he was relieved that Vernon hadn't said a word the whole way back from London; in other ways, he was worried by the fact he hadn't been sworn at yet.

He slumped down on his bed and stared at his hands.

Then something occurred to him, and he took another look at the layout of the room.

The door opened inwards, and there was just enough space between it and the foot of his bed for it to swing. Coincidentally, this was also just enough space for him to wedge it firmly shut with his school trunk.

He had privacy whenever he wanted.

Thinking about that led to another startling realisation. Dobby had stated that he wanted to be Harry's elf.

If Dobby wanted to do that, well, all the more power to the little guy. Harry liked Dobby a lot; who the hell was he to say no to something the excitable elf wanted so much?

"Dobby..."

"Mr Harry Potter Sir is calling for Dobby?"

Harry paused, staring in shock at the elf. Gone were the multi-hued stacks of misfitting clothes; Dobby was dressed to kill.

Literally. He was wearing neatly-crafted khaki battledress, an officer's peaked cap, carefully-polished boots, and combat webbing.

"Wow, Dobby! I like the new look!"

"Oh, the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir is approves of Dobby's uniform!" Dobby gasped, about to go into one of his leg-hugging outbreaks, but he suddenly seemed to catch himself; he pulled himself to a passable approximation of attention, then saluted with one hand, then the other, then both at the same time.

Harry paused. If Dobby wanted to take this military-esque thing seriously... what was a commanding officer supposed to say in this situation?

Oh yeah.

"At ease."

Dobby relaxed a bit, a massive smile spreading across his face.

"Dobby, I'm going to jam my door shut with my trunk and leave it that way." Harry told him. "The less of the Dursleys I have to see the better, but I'll need to eat, wash, and, you know, crap."

Dobby saluted again. "Mr Harry Potter Sir is needs somebody to be dealing with his foods and baths and launderies and poops, yes?"

"Yeah." Harry admitted, slightly embarrassed.

Dobby thoughtfully scratched his jaw.

"This is not being the sort of room that is being suitable for the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir." he said, giving the room a diabolical look. "Hmm... but if Dobby is tries to be does thingses about that, the Ministeration of Very Silly Biggers is thinks that Dobby's magics is being Mr Harry Potter Sir's magics. They is being able to be detecterating the magics, yes? But if the magics is comes from a place where there is not being growed-up wizardses, they is thinks that it is being the studentses being silly peoples. But if the studentses is has a house-elf, they is thinks that it is being the elfses."

"Um, Dobby, if I did that Hermione would have my guts for garters."

"Oh, Mr Harry Potter Sir is not worries about that. Dobby is going to be carefully explaining to Miss Grangy Ma'am about what it is being for the house-elfs so Miss Grangy Ma'am is not gets angry at the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir."

"She'll take a lot of convincing." Harry said with a laugh. Then he realised something.

"Hmm." he said. "Dobby, all military personnel are entitled to the Queen's Shilling."

"What is that being, Mr Harry Potter Sir?"

Harry, deciding to play along, saluted Dobby.

"As a Wing Commander in the Magical Air Force, you're entitled to full pay and benefits." he said. "I mean, since you're putting yourself in harms way for, well, me, I'd damn better be paying you for the effort, and the same goes for all soldiers, sailors and airmen in my service. That way, Hermione maybe won't bite my head off."

"SIR! Mr Harry Potter Sir, YES SIR!" Dobby barked, once again saluting several times with different or both hands.

"Now we need the paperwork." Harry said, extending a hand, which Dobby gleefully shook.

"Yes Sir! At once Sir!"

Pop.

Harry spent a few minutes giggling, but stopped and schooled his features immediately when Dobby popped back in holding a sheaf of paperwork.

Accepting the paperwork with another salute (which was returned tenfold) he had a quick look at it, and couldn't keep a straight face; Dobby had been on the exact same wavelength.

It was the Ministry of Magic forms to confirm the acceptance of a house elf's services.

"Ten Galleons per day, plus one Galleon per hour of active combat duty." he said.

"Oh no no no, Dobby is not takes so much of the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir's moneys!"

And so began an odd sort of bargaining session, with the hiree (Dobby) arguing for less pay while the hirer (Harry) argued for more, and the elf proved to be adept at bargaining; Harry only managed to get Dobby to accept a Galleon per day (plus one knut per hour of active combat duty) by arguing that, as an Officer and a Gentleman with Duties of Command, Dobby was of course entitled to lots more pay than the rank-and-file.

Once they were done, they filled the forms in, Dobby popped away in a salute position with the paperwork tucked under his off arm, and Harry ceremoniously jammed his trunk between the door and the end of his bed.

Then he started getting ideas involving ghetto blasters and the loudest weirdest music on Earth, causing him to start giggling like an idiot again.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

At about the same time that Harry was arguing pay with Dobby, Millicent Bulstrode was climbing out of her grand-uncle's Land-Rover.

The extended Bulstrode family, the muggle side included, lived on one of the biggest organic farms in southern Lancashire. Thirty-six Bulstrodes, seventeen Conners, twelve Murchisons, three Perssons and one Doyle called the farm and it's twenty-three square miles of land home. Their mainstay was cattle; Millie's father, Nicholas Bulstrode, had inherited his father's dab hand with bulls, and with the assistance of his brother-in-law Archie he reared some of the finest prize bulls in Britain, but they also farmed a variety of fruit, vegetables, pulses and grains.

Farming had been in the family for generations. Millie's great-great-great-grandfather was the man who'd realised the yawning hole in the Wizarding World's resources, and Theophilus Bulstrode's realisation had come at the time the Black Plague was sweeping through the muggle world like a combine harvester through wheat.

Now they were the primary food producers for Hogwarts itself; an important position within Wizarding Britain, and one that made them, simply put, a target.

She wasn't sure how her da would take it when he learned about Harry's plan, but she was absolutely certain that they needed the protection inherent in having a heavily-armed airbase smack dab in the middle of their land.

"Ey, Millie." There he was, slouching across the farmyard and knocking dirt off his hands. "Ow's t'school?"

"Da, 'ee's back."

Nick's face fell. "Y'sure?"

"Yeah, Da."

"T'ministry sez 'ee ain't."

"T'ministry's fulla shoite. Spoke t'Potter. Saw t'old man's face. 'Ee's back, Da."

Nick Bulstrode spent a few moments staring out across the barnyard, at one very specific tumbledown building – a barn that'd had it's door blocked shut by an old trailer for as long as Millie could remember.

"Potter? What's 'ee at?"

"Ee's gonna fight, Da."

Nick nodded, pursing his lips, frowned, then seemed to make his mind up.

"Ey, Jonno!" he shouted over to the man who was just reversing the big Massey-Ferguson into it's shed.

"Yeah boss?" Jonno Murchison, one of Millie's muggle second cousins by a couple removals, shouted back, barely audible over the tractor's engine.

"Get t'lads. Meetin' in nine."

Nick went back to gazing at that old barn.

"Aye boss."

"Yer mam's in t'long barn, Millie." he said. "Tell 'er t'tell 'er da 'ee was bludy right."

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Hermione Jane Granger was worried.

She'd known Harry James Potter for nearly four years now, and in that time they'd been through so much together that it felt like just about forever. And, up until yesterday, she'd been pretty much certain she'd got Harry taped.

She knew how he thought, at least going by how he reacted. She knew what sort of thing he'd do and what sort of effort he'd put into it.

Starting some sort of house-elf Air Force was so completely outside of anything she'd expect Harry to go for that she'd been left reeling. Seeing him accept someone's oath of servitude had been enough to completely throw her for a loop and leave her wondering if the Pod People were invading. Then he started compartmentalising and issuing orders, and she suddenly found herself wondering whether she'd ever really known Harry, or just a façade he presented to the world.

The realisation that him standing up and issuing orders got her excited had flipped her world-view even further on it's ear.

She'd been perfectly aware her parents knew she was distracted as she met them at Kings' Cross, and just as aware of Harry being unceremoniously dragged off to another summer's Purgatory by the fat slug who called himself Harry's uncle.

How exactly such a gibbering buffoon had managed to raise a guy like Harry...

As she climbed into her parents' car, she was a million miles away, thinking about the books she'd brought, about her maternal uncle Timothy and his war stories, about the far-away look in her paternal uncle Dan's eyes when he talked about the Falklands, and about the rumble of aero-engines at the airshows she'd been to when uncle Tim's airbase threw their yearly Friends & Family day. She thought about Millicent Bulstrode, and the raw edge of fear in the hefty girl's eyes – and she was sure that it hadn't been fear of Harry. She thought about what she'd asked Harry on the Express, and the offhanded way he'd said 'Not yet', and about why she'd offered to research how the Dark Mark worked – a part of her wondered if she'd end up with one of those things on her arm, and she realised she was simultaneously excited and frightened by the idea.

And it all came back to Harry. Harry, Harry, Harry. She had realised a while back that the two of them orbited each other like a binary star; it always came back to Harry, and she fully believed that, for Harry, everything always came back to her.

She was sure she should be telling Dumbledore about this. She'd spent half an hour staring at a piece of parchment, trying to figure out how to put in words the fact that he needed to know and the fact that she was certain this had to happen, but she hadn't managed to put quill to parchment, and it all came down to Harry asking – no, not asking. Ordering her to keep it all private.

"Penny for?" her father asked, and she realised they were now on the ring-road around London, well on their way to the road back home to Bristol.

"Oh, nothing much." she said, trying to sound cheerful.

In the front of the car, Jeff and Anne Granger gave each other meaningful looks.

Hermione had always been their miracle girl, their one-in-a-million chance come true. They had been almost too young, and it had taken them several years struggle – all through college and then university – and medical assistance before they managed to conceive Hermione, and the pregnancy had not been an easy one; mother and daughter had only just survived the terrifyingly difficult birth, and it had left Anne unable to bear further children.

Both of them were from military families. Jeff had one brother in the Coldstream Guards; the third Granger brother had died in the Falklands with a Special Air Service badge on his cap. Anne had one brother in the RAF and one who drove tanks, both still living. Jeff's father had served in the Commandos, and his paternal grandfather had been one of the men who discovered Belsen; his paternal grandmother had been an inmate in that hell. Anne's father and grandfather between them had flown damn nearly every fighter the Royal Air Force had ever put in the air; her grandfather had learned to fly in the first world war, and became an ace during the second. There were DSOs and MBEs a-plenty on both sides of the family, and one of Jeff's grand-uncles had won the Victoria Cross. Both were descended from men who fought at Waterloo, and Anne could name five ancestors who'd stood upon that battlefield.

Both were very familiar with the voice of the shell-shocked, and hearing that tone in their miracle daughter's voice made their blood run cold.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

"Dobby is saying hello, Miss Grangy Ma'am. Dobby is wanting to be talking to Miss Grangy Ma'am about house elfses and bondses."

Talk about ways to put Hermione Jane Granger in a bad mood. After all that business with Winky at the World Cup, she'd read what little material she was able to find on magical bonds, and what she'd learned had horrified her. She'd just got home and was halfway into unpacking her stuff when the elf arrived.

"What about them?" She said, not wanting to snap at the elf despite how furious the subject made her. She knew how badly off they really were, and couldn't understand how other people – especially the elves themselves – just couldn't seem to get the idea.

"It is being very complicerated, Miss Grangy Ma'am." Dobby said, hopping up on top of her desk and giving her a droopy-eared solemn look as well as a sincere surprise concerning his current apparel. "Miss Grangy Ma'am is telling Dobby, is house elfses letting wizards be putting bonds on house elfses if bonds is always being bad things? We is not knowing big wordses like Miss Grangy Ma'am, but we is not silly buggers like them what yous is getting the wools and mutton off. House elfses is being quite strong, Miss Grangy Ma'am. We is not being as strong as wizards and witches, and we is nothing likes as strong as Mr Harry Potter Sir, but we is being strong enough. Wards is not stopping house elfses going in and out. We is going where we is wanting to go. Is Miss Grangy Ma'am thinking house elfses can't go away if house elfses is wanting to go away? Bonds is only happens if elfses is letting wizards do bond thingy. If elfses is having good bond, elfses is being able to use little bit of masters magics, and all magics that is from masters places and properties, and it is very good."

But Hermione wasn't in the mood to listen. She didn't have a whole lot of flaws, but her worst was that she was, frankly, an intellectual snob.

"You really don't know what you're talking about, Dobby." She said.

Dobby looked extremely put out.

"Miss Grangy Ma'am is being rude!" He complained. "Dobby is being a house elf and Miss Grangy Ma'am is being a Bigger so how is Dobby not knows more about what it is being like to be being house elfses?"

"Sometimes the truth isn't good manners, Dobby." Hermione told him. "The truth is, you're an escaped slave, and all of your people are slaves."

"Miss Grangy Ma'am is not being listen to Dobby whatever Dobby is saying." Dobby snapped. "Miss Grangy Ma'am is being a very silly person and is makes the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir sad!"

He vanished with a pop.

"… what the…?" Hermione muttered, running that through her mind again. Filtered through her prejudice against house elf bonds, and coloured by the fact she frankly thought house elves were a bit stupid – no, stupid wasn't the right word. Over-straightforward, with a fixed view of the world, unable to think outside the box, unable to see how such intelligent and resourceful beings should be so much more than servants – she put two and two together and got a grand total of cabbage.

Dobby was blinkered, she was sure of it. It wasn't really his fault; like anyone, he was a product of his upbringing.

Product of upbringing. How the hell had Harry managed to come out so well?

She was worried as Hell about Harry. And, as she always did, her instinct on being worried about something was to turn to any available authority figure – especially if that figure was Albus Dumbledore.

Dumbledore had left one of the school owls (a barn owl by the name of Rupert) with Hermione over the summer, and had her staying in regular contact with him. He'd been especially adamant that, if Harry were to contact her, she was to let Dumbledore know. Dumbledore had carefully explained that he was awfully worried about Harry, because Harry had seen some horrible things, and then there was all that unpleasantness with the Ministry, and, and, and… And Hermione had listened, like she always did when dealing with an authority figure.

Why she hadn't told him about Harry's plan she wasn't sure. Okay, so Harry had specifically said not to share it with anyone. Normally she'd use her own judgement, but he'd been so adamant, so serious, so... so commanding...

"Damnit, I don't know what to do." she muttered, going and sprawling on her bed. She wasn't really aware of it, not yet, but her image of authority had started to slip over the last couple of days – the Headmaster of Hogwarts now being warred with by a certain young man with shaggy hair and intense green eyes.

Dumbledore said it was important that he knew what was going on. Harry said it was important that nobody knew what was going on. They were both right, on different levels of right, but she wasn't sure who was more right.

Hang on, hadn't the elf said something about Harry being upset? Was he getting depressed? She'd known he shouldn't be going back to those damn Dursleys! What were they doing to him? Bastards! How dare they? Hadn't they got any human compassion at all? He'd just seen someone killed right in front of him, for Christ sake!

Nothing for it. She couldn't just sit there and do nothing. But what could she do anyway? Until Harry managed to get out of there, she was stuck; just about anyone in the Wizarding World knew who Harry's best friends were, and if she did what she wanted to do – went to Privet Drive and hexed the Dursleys until they twitched– she'd probably end up leading Harry's enemies straight to his doorstep.

Maybe she could let Dumbledore know that Harry was getting depressed and shouldn't have to stay at the Dursleys for very long? No, she wasn't certain yet.

Damnit, when she got her hands on those Dursleys...!

She squirmed round and scrambled off her bed, rooted around in her stuff, found a quill and parchment, and sat there staring at it, trying to decide what to write and who to write to.

Harry? Dumbledore? Harry? Dumbledore?

-/-

Dear Harry,

Are you okay? Dobby said something about...

**-End Chapter-**

Well, here we go, that's Chapter 1 in the can. Nothing much else to say aside from, enjoy.

Cheers,

Cal.


	3. Chapter 2

**This ain't no self-insert fic.**

**This ain't no slash fic neither.**

**This is the Book of Dobby.**

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

"_We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender..._"

Prime Minister Winston Churchill

4th June 1940.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Three days had passed since Harry arrived back at Number 4 from Hogwarts, and they had without a shadow of a doubt been the most pleasant at-the-Dursleys three days of his life, primarily as he hadn't seen anything of the Dursleys at all since he'd jammed the door shut with his trunk.

In the same vein, it wasn't the first time his door had been thoroughly locked – but this time the locks were on the inside, and Harry had the keys.

When his uncle had come pounding on the door and demanding that he 'get-your-freak-backside-downstairs-and-make-yourself-useful-for-once-boy!', he'd spent a few moments drumming up his courage and then cast a silencing charm on the door; a few nerve-racking hours of waiting for an owl from the Ministry later and he finally admitted that yes, Dobby was right and the Ministry really were that dim.

Then, and only then, he'd let Dobby go wild, expanding the room into what the excitable elf called 'suitable for the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir, Sir!' (salute.)

Since then, he'd had more space to himself than the Hogwarts Great Hall, though admittedly it still had only two power points; that said, these were (with the assistance of a couple of extension leads) enough to plug in the enormous entertainment system he'd got Dobby to pinch from Dudley's room and the electric cooker and fridge he'd likewise got Dobby to pinch, this time from Petunia Dursley's kitchen.

(Dobby wasn't very happy about Mr Harry Potter Sir insisting on cooking for himself, and had been absolutely gobsmacked when Harry explained that he enjoyed cooking when he was cooking for himself and not the damn Dursleys.)

But all pleasantness, peace, quiet, disturbing the Dursleys with loud music at stupid o'clock in the morning, eating whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, and never having to see Vernon's purple face or Dudley's growing collection of chins aside, the fact remained that Harry was incredibly bored. He was in fact so bored that he'd completed his summer's homework in record time, read half the books he'd never got around to reading at Hogwarts, played one of Dudley's computer games to death and beyond, and was now sprawled on the sofa muttering and grumbling to himself – he was in fact so bored he kept fantasizing about house-elves with conundrums.

He wanted, he realised, to go out somewhere nobody would give him a hard time. Maybe shopping or something since he couldn't really just hang out without his friends.

"Damnit, I wish I could get out the house without the Dursleys being Dursley-ish or whoever it is has been watching the house in invisibility cloaks getting in the way."

Pop. Salute.

"Mr Harry Potter Sir's wish is being Dobby's command, SIR!"

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

**Disclaimer: This disclaymyer is being Classificated and you is not being allowed to be reading it.**

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

**The Holy Testament of Dobby.**

**Per Arcana ad Astra**

**A Doghead13 fanfic**

**Written & produced by Calum J 'Doghead13' Wallace**

**Preread by the CaerAzkaban Yahoo group.**

**Brought to you by Hairy Scottish Git Productions, GMBH**

**Dedicated to those incredible people who spent the best part of the 1940's saving the world – and to everyone who's followed in their footsteps since.**

**This is not a drill.**

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

**Chapter 2: The First Shots.**

**(In which our hero makes his escape.)**

Several enjoyable hours in Birmingham with Vernon's wallet and credit card later, Harry found himself possessed of several things he'd really wished he had for a very long time; clothes that he liked and that fit (courtesy of an army surplus shop, an industrial suppliers, half a dozen weird-clothing-shops and a charity shop) a great big pile of any old books that had grabbed his attention, a wide assortment of bits and pieces he'd bought because he just, well, felt like it, and a wobbly pile of random CD's that'd taken his fancy. He'd never heard of this heavy metal stuff before, but on wandering into a speciality music shop and hearing something loud, weird and about tail gunners on the shop stereo, he'd immediately known the simple and direct way to piss the Dursleys off.

It was the first time he'd ever been able to blow money for the sheer fun of it, and the experience was an eye-opener. The repressed young man had just had his first taste of freedom, and he found the flavour to his liking.

Galvanised, he decided to finally get off his tush and start organising what was needed for Dobby's plan – a plan that would hopefully remove all hint of Dursley from his not-so-distant future.

The first order of business was to write to his godfather.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Sirius Orion Black, Padfoot the Stupendous himself in person, fortunately-orphaned heir, escaped convict, big bad biker, technomancer, wrongfully-convicted Not-The-Secret-Keeper, God's gift to women, and only badass ever badassed enough to escape from Azkaban without outside assistance (or at least, all that was what he thought of himself) was chilling out with a keg of Newkie Brown, a half-Q of skunk, some ham and mustard sandwiches, and a little Thin Lizzy.

Currently, between that and perusing his assorted old stashes around the Most Ancient And Noble House Of Black (a misnomer indeed if anyone was to ask his of course most educated experience, he and his cousin Andromeda were the only Blacks who'd ever had an ounce of noble-ness) for things with which to try to give his third least favourite person (one Severus 'Snivellus The Grease-Head Bastard' Snape, third only behind Peter 'Treacherous Little Rat' Pettigrew and the self-styled Lord Voldemort, he of absolutely no sense of humour worthy of the term) an apoplexy, this was his most frequent pastime. Seriously. Possibly even Siriusly. He'd toked so much resin, chugged so much brew, and listened to so much rock-and-roll, in the last couple months that he was no longer quite sure which end of his body his head belonged upon.

(He was pretty sure it belonged atop his neck. But he had his niggling doubts. After all, Severus Mercurio Snape's head was atop Severus Mercurio Snape's neck, and it most assuredly did not belong there.)

Thus it was that Sirius's reaction was casual to say the least when a gas-masked tin-hatted olive-drab-clad house elf appeared atop his bong, screamed "YOU IS TURNS OUT THOSE LIGHTS! DON'T YOU KNOWS THERE IS BEING A WAR ON?" and deposited an envelope in his lap.

"Woah." he said as the elf vanished. "Haven't seen anything like that since Lily got her first underage magic warning... oh man I've got the munchies. OI! KREACHER! MORE SANDWICHES, I'M STARVING! Damnit, I gotta get me the Afghan Gold soon, this shit's _weak_."

Remembering the letter, he picked it up and had a look at it. From the fact it was addressed to 'PADFOOT' in familiar chicken-scratch handwriting, it was presumably from Harry, although why it hadn't arrived by white owl was anyone's guess, as was why it was in a muggle-style envelope. Shrugging, he ripped it open, unfolded the piece of muggle-style paper (with writing in muggle-style ballpoint) within, and got puzzled.

'Hey Padfoot, how's it?

I guess the way this thing's been delivered probably came as a surprise. Sorry about that, but I don't want to risk this falling into the wrong hands; Hedwig's good, but going by what happened the summer before second year, post owls are relatively easy to intercept.'

(Sirius made a mental note-to-self that he needed to find out exactly what happened)

'House elves, on the other hand, aren't.

Talking about house elves, Dobby cooked up an idea that I think is bloody brilliant.'

(Dobby? Wasn't that the mad house-elf who seemed to worship Harry?)

'The problem is, to get the idea to work I'll need a load of things; first off I'll need to get away from the Dursleys and vanish someplace, second off I'll need to know how to get an engine to work around a load of magic, and third off I'll need a boatload of help.'

(Vanishing, Sirius could equate with. He'd argued with Dumbledore about getting Harry the Hell off Privet Drive till he was blue in the face. Engines, huh? Was Harry wanting to follow in his godfather's footsteps? Help was easy, it wasn't like Sirius had anything better to do.)

'The result will scare Voldemort's lot even worse than they scare everyone else. You see, I've decided it's time to show those fannies how a real war works – I am going to hit them in a way they can't understand, I am going to kick over every rock, shine light in every dark corner – there will be nowhere they can run, nowhere they can hide, and nothing they can do but die.'

(What the hoek? This sounded intriguing.)

'If you want to help hit back against those bastards, call Dobby and give him your reply.

Love,

Harry.

PS – Don't tell anyone a damn thing about this!'

Sirius considered the letter for a long moment, trying to think of how those ingredients would work to that result. He then erupted to his feet and went charging off to his old bedroom; having pried up a specific floorboard, he seized the treasures within.

These consisted of a half-dozen muggle-style A4 ring-bound notebooks all stapled together to form a book titled 'Wildcat and The Marauders Present: THE FINE ART OF TECHNOMANCY', the two-way mirrors he and James and the rat had contrived back in third year while trying to work out what was going on with their dorm-mate Remus Lupin, Lily's granddad's Webley revolver from the First World War, the Haynes manual for a Harley-Davidson 45" WLA motorcycle as annotated by Sirius and Lily, a bottle of twenty-five-year-old single-malt, and a huge armload of pornography.

Right, how to do this? A quick check of the rota for Harry-guard-duty showed Mundungus Fletcher to be on duty that night; only a few minutes work would be required to spike the lazy trader in questionable second-hand goods' hip-flask with some super-strength laxatives. His dearly-beloved Harley was currently 'on vacation' at Hagrid's place; Sirius made a mental note-to-self that he needed to get the old dear back off the gentle giant. In the meantime, he had a sample of Arthur Weasely's hair to add to some of his stash of blank polyjuice, a goblin to talk to about moneys and wills, a motorcycle to purchase and ensorcel, and a care package to prepare for his much put-upon godson. Hmm, maybe one bottle of whiskey wasn't enough. Sirius made another note-to-self that he really had to drop past an off-license and a couple of his dealers, put together some decent smokes and drink for Harry, and surely there was some better porn he could pick up someplace?

Busy busy busy busy busy!

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

The Boy-Who-Decided-To-Kick-Ass he might be, but Harry James Potter was also a slightly scatterbrained teenage boy, and that meant he got bored easily.

A few hours had passed since he wrote to Sirius, and in that time he'd written to most of his friends, fiddled around some more with his homework, eaten some bacon and eggs, fiddled around with the stereo, and finally resorted to laying on the floor with a sketch pad and biro, trying to come up with schemes and generally only managing to do lots of doodles in margins of Snape and Voldemort being bombed and shot at by oddly ferocious-looking house elves in caricatures of second-world-war aircraft.

He'd long since decided that he really needed someone to talk to about all this, and Dobby just wasn't quite the right person for that. Dobby was a great little guy and all that, but he was completely hyperactive and tended to latch onto weird things. Hermione would be best, he always thought best when he had Hermione to bounce ideas off, but he hadn't so much as received a single letter from her since he got off the train.

Just as he was wondering about that for the third time in the last hour, something tapped on his window.

He hastily scrambled to his feet, grabbing his wand, and went to check.

He was surprised and pleased to find Sirius Black sitting on a broom outside his window.

"Hi, Harr." Sirius said. "Can I come in?"

"Sirius! Yeah, yeah, sure, come on in!"

"Wow. You've really sorted this place out, huh? How'd you get round that underage magic horse-shite?" Sirius asked, scrambling in the window.

"Well, I kinda ended up with a house-elf, and-"

"Aha, you're learning fast, young grasshopper!" Sirius declared, obviously very pleased. "I guess you mean that mad elf, what's his name, Dooby? No, Dobby. Right?"

"Yeah, him."

"Is he okay?"

"I'd be lost without him."

"That's cool, then... So, what's the big plan and all? I mean, motorbikes are great fun and have totally gotta be done, but I can't see how they'll make things explode. Well, unless you do something really horrible to the engine, and then it's the engine that'll explode, and they don't normally blow up that hard."

By way of a reply, Harry went straight for the pile of videos he'd bought in Birmingham, had a root through, and selected one of the ones he'd watched.

Its cover bore a painting of a guy in a flightsuit and oxygen mask, his hands on an aircraft's control yokes, with a dam exploding in the backgrounds, and the words, 'THE DAM BUSTERS' in big excited red letters.

"I'm not totally sure how to say it all, Sirius." he said. "So, y'know, we'll watch this. It's like a film version of something that really happened..."

-/-Soundtrack: The Dambusters March-/-

"Holy, holy, holy SHIT." Sirius finally said as the credits rolled. It was the first thing out his mouth since he'd asked why there weren't any colours on the screen, whereupon Harry had said a few brief things about black-and-white and colour, and Sirius had shrugged and taken that 'movie cameras that do colours weren't very common then' at face value.

"That was..." he continued, then stopped, slowly shaking his head. "Harry, are you sure that stuff was for real?"

Harry just nodded by way of a reply.

"Holy shit." Sirius repeated, slowly shaking his head. "Y'know... Harry, I'm starting to see what you've been cooking up. You realise this'll kill a hell of a lot of people?"

Harry nodded again.

"Yeah." he said. "I do."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"... no."

Sirius sat there and considered that for several moments, then let out a bark of laughter.

"I'm gonna let you into a secret, Harry. Much of everything the Marauders did were stupid things that seemed like a good idea at the time. Do I think most of 'em were bad ideas? Yup. Do I regret doing 'em? Hell no! Only thing I regret is trying to use Moony to murder Snivellus instead of something that wouldn't get one of my friends sent down. An unfortunate anvil-related accident, maybe. Well, and I regret not managing to get that hook-nosed bastard dead, and maybe I kinda regret that I never managed to piss my mother off enough to give the old bitch a heart attack. But the point is, if you're already not sure it's a good idea then it's probably worth doing it anyway."

"... that's some screwy reasoning."

"Nah, not really. Y'see, asking yourself 'Am I sure this is a good idea?' is the first step on making sure it really is a good idea. And, y'know, it's better to regret screwing up than to regret sitting on your arse and doing nothing." Sirius waved a hand at the TV. "Those bomber thingamajigs. Those are seriously bloody scary stuff, Harry, and I reckon right now we need seriously bloody scary stuff, and I can already think of all sorts of ways magic could improve them."

"Me too." Harry agreed. "Imagine how much bigger a bomb you could make if the inside of the bomb casing was like Professor Moody's trunk or that tent the Weaselys borrowed – you know, bigger on the inside than it is on the outside without weighing more."

Sirius nodded, grinning. "That's the sort of stuff I'm talking about. Anyway, I think you've got the right idea here. I mean, I don't know if it'll work, but I do know it sounds like it's worth giving a damn good try. I'm with ya, kid."

He picked up the satchel he'd been carrying when he arrived, which he'd dumped on Harry's sofa, and opened it, fishing out a certain makeshift book; this he handed to Harry.

"What's this?" Harry asked, curiously reading the scrawled words on the cover; ' Wildcat and The Marauders Present: THE FINE ART OF TECHNOMANCY.'

"It's how we modified my bike and your mother's car." Sirius said. "Most of what's in there is semi-theoretical, right, but there's a lot that we figured out how to get to work. But the biggest secret in that book is that high-intensity magic doesn't do jack shit to older electrical gadgets, like a bike's ignition circuits or one of those old valve radios. We hadn't figured out how to get those transistor thingies to play nice when, well, Halloween '81 and all that – about as far as we'd got was that silicon components start behaving weirdly when there's a lot of magic in the air, and I mean an absolute shitload, like at somewhere that's been under intensive wards for centuries, or if you stuffed it up a dragon's bumhole, or if it got hit by one of those mage-storms they get out near Bermuda."

Harry nodded thoughtfully. "Sirius... how much of your bike is magic?"

"Not that much, actually. It's got some modified broom charms on the frame and headstock and handlebars, a couple of modified switchable muggle-repelling wards – one tuned to the muggle fuzz, one to all muggles – a charm on the fuel tank to transfigure any water you put in there into petrol, and this really neat two-way charm on the exhausts your mum came up with that can either make it completely silent or make it way, way louder. We... had a lot of other stuff planned, we were going to make it able to drive itself, but..."

"Wormtail happened, yeah, I get the idea... Sirius, how illegal is all that?"

"Not too illegal. Well, it wasn't at the time – until twelve years ago, it was only illegal to enchant so-called 'muggle artefacts' if they were less than thirty years old; my bike was thirty-one the year I got it, it was built in 1944. All that got changed when Fudge got in, he's a right muggle-hater that one. These days, gear like my bike is grandfathered in as it was legal prior to the alterations in the law, and any artefact that can be proven to have been entirely made by wizarding hands gets through a loophole designed to avoid banning the Wizarding Wireless, magical printing presses, the Knight Bus, the Hogwarts Express , the Ministry's entry box and those cars the Ministry use."

"Aw, sod Fudge and sod the Ministry." Harry grumbled. "They're a bunch of sodding wankers who deserve their arses handed to them in a sandwich baggie."

"Yeah, I'm with you on that one. So... what's the big plan? How're we gonna do this?"

Harry thought about that for a long moment. He'd been thinking about that for days.

"Well, the first thing I need is an airfield." he said. "And Millicent Bulstrode's got one of those. Dumbledore's certain I need to stay here longer, and I don't think he'll let me, you know, not stay here longer, so I need someone to be my go-between."

Sirius beamed, producing a pair of somewhat grubby mirrors; these he handed to Harry.

"This should help. It's something else me and your parents were working on back when. They're linked together – they show each other's reflection, basically. It's not what we were aiming for, Lily wanted something that'd be like a mix of a Floo connection and a muggle telephone but you could carry it around. This was just to figure out a way to link two things that could be used for communication. There's versions of what we were working on, but I don't know where they were – your father had them when... well, you know."

"Do you know how to make them?" Harry pounced.

Sirius tapped the makeshift book. "It's all there."

"... awesome... Sirius, I need you to help me communicate with Millicent Bulstrode in secret, and I need you to make a version of these mirrors that only transmits voices, that can be worn on someone's head, that communicates with all such thingies, and that's secure so nothing Wormtail knows is enough to get onto its network."

"... wow. That's a pretty tall order, but I think I can do it. Especially if I get Moony in on this; he was always the brains out of the Marauders."

"That's cool. Just don't tell him what it's for, and make sure it's possible to set up more than one network – that way we can give Dumbledore's 'old gang' secure communications without compromising ours."

"... that's a bloody good idea." Sirius muttered.

Harry beamed.

"Harry, are you sure about the Bulstrode girl? She's a Slytherin."

"I'm completely sure about her. She swore an oath, on her magic and life, to serve me."

"... holy crap. Listen, I gotta get mobile; Dung's probably gonna finish on the crapper in about ten minutes." Sirius picked up one of the mirrors and pocketed it. "I'll keep you posted; we can use these to work out how I'll get in touch with the Bulstrodes without getting a Reducto in the face and Aurors up the ying-yang. Stay in touch, okay?"

"You too. And, y'know, be careful okay?"

"Willdo. I'll see you around. Oh, and I thought you'd appreciate the other stuff that's in that bag."

With that, Sirius sprang out the window, landing neatly on his broom, and rocketed away.

Harry considered the bag for a moment, then opened it and had a root around.

When he realised it contained booze, cigars, porn, an annotated Harley-Davidson service manual, and a sadly unloaded Webley revolver, he at once declared loudly and repeatedly that he had the coolest godfather EVER.

Where he'd been discretely making certain that Mr Seerius Padfeets Black Sir didn't mean the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir any ill, Dobby smiled in satisfaction, both at the immense amount of useful work he had to do and at the fact that the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir had a very genuine smile on his face.

Between making sure that every elf had his Uniformeration and Mr Harry Potter Sir's Shillering and knew how to salute, organising the gathering of Vitalatious Resourcerations for the War Effortses, seeing to the daily needs of Mr Harry Potter Sir, making sure that Mr Harry Potter Sir's rooms were sufficient for such a Great and Tremendous and Noble Wizard, and whipping the Recruitses into shape, Dobby hardly had enough time to sit still, and never mind sleep.

And he was the happiest he'd been since before he entered the service of the Very Naughty Masters Malfoyses.

Seeing that smile on Mr Harry Potter Sir's face was the finishing touch that made Dobby's day the best EVER.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Hermione Jane Granger had gone past worried and clear into the territory of frightened.

In the last three days she'd sent her best (and sometimes, when she was in her bleaker moods, it felt like he was her only) friend in the whole world no less than twelve letters without getting a reply; what was wrong? Had those damned Dursleys hurt him?

She was getting desperate. The longer she waited, the shorter the intervals between her writing to him; currently, she had three half-written letters to Harry laying on her desk among a scrum of books, notes on possibilities for airbase security, distracted doodles of this and that, the ruins of her last five meals, and the leftovers from her long-since-completed homework.

What had happened? Had the Death Eaters attacked him? Was he dead, had they captured him, why hadn't she heard anything?

Sitting there staring blankly at a half-written letter, she realised she only had one option left.

She had to write to Dumbledore.

So she unearthed a non-doodled-on scrap of parchment, and finally, on the fifth attempt, managed to compose something rambling but pointed that would have to do.

This she gave to Rupert the Owl, requesting the bird take it to Albus Dumbledore.

She was completely freaked out when, on launching out the window, the unfortunate bird vanished with a squawk and a cloud of feathers.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

About half an hour after Sirius left, Harry was laying on the floor with his mother's book open in front of him, scrawling notes on a spare piece of paper while intermittently chewing on the end of a pencil, when he started getting a bit cold.

Thinking that Vernon had probably been messing with the power, he got up and went to close the window.

It was hell of a foggy outside. Too foggy. Unnaturally foggy.

Remembering the bit of his mum's book he'd just got to, he conjured six shells into the Webley's breech – he had no idea if they'd work, according to his mum's notes you had to properly understand the function of the ammunition to be able to conjure them right – took the revolver in his left hand and his wand in his right, and had a cautious peer out of the window.

What he saw gliding through the mist from the direction of Magnolia Crescent made his blood run cold.

Dementors. Two of them.

Time to put the Webley to the test.

He raised the old pistol, gripped it in both hands, lined up on the lead Dementor, and squeezed the trigger.

The thunderclap of the gunshot tore the stifling silence away; smoke and fire blasted from the revolver's muzzle – way more than there should have been – and the Dementor went staggering backwards, colliding with its compatriot before recovering, straightening up, and continuing to drift towards the house.

Harry headed for the door, and paused.

He wasn't sure whether or not to do, well, anything. He'd often told himself that he didn't care whether the Dursleys lived or died.

"I must be bloody nuts." he muttered, kicking his trunk out the way and scrabbling with the locks. Once unlocked on this side, the door refused to budge.

Losing his temper, he blew it open with a bludgeoning hex, sending splinters flying across the hall, and headed at a flat-out sprint for the stairs, which he took three at a time, wincing as he heard the screaming.

Arriving at the bottom, he found pretty much what he'd been expecting; one of the Dementors was just straightening up and letting Vernon Dursley drop, the other was reaching for a shrieking Petunia, and Dudley was curled up in the corner of the hall and howling like a lost soul.

The Webley thundered again, sending the Dementor that had been reaching for Petunia staggering back out the door; the other turned round, and Harry shot it in the face.

"Die, abomination!" Where the hell did that come from?

Normally, the presence of a Dementor leads pretty directly to despair. Not this time. Not for Harry.

His reaction to those two Dementors was pure, unadulterated, boiling rage.

His aura lashed out at everything around him, through Dudley and Petunia Dursley, through Vernon's corpse, through the wreckage of the hallway, and through the seventy-year-old Webley. Uncontrolled magic surged in the hallway, changing everything it touched.

Dudley screamed again as he suddenly found himself able to see the unknown THINGS that had just killed his dad.

Petunia's fingernails turned electric blue; she too screamed again, likewise able to see the monsters in the doorway.

Vernon's hair started growing. If he'd been alive, he would have been delighted as he'd hated being bald; as he was thoroughly dead, he didn't have much of anything to say about this.

The Webley responded to his next trigger pull by blasting the unfortunate Dementor's head into a fine grey mist.

The second Dementor had just enough time to direct a shocked look at its suddenly deceased companion before Harry fired again; the bullet tore its jaw off.

Yelling incoherently, Harry fired again and again and again, unheeding of the clicks when the handgun ran dry, unheeding of the thoroughly disassembled state of the two Dementors, until a pale and shaking Dudley pushed the gun down.

"Th-they're d-dead, Harry." the overweight boy stated.

"Oh God, Vernon..." Petunia moaned.

Harry stared at the battered wreckage that had been two Dementors, and then looked at the Webley.

He was pretty sure that it hadn't had that weird two-headed eagle symbol on the grips when he got it, and he was certain the Latin on the barrel was new.

'Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici'? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

"W-what were th-them things?" Dudley asked, still ashen.

"Th-they were D-d-Dementors, w-weren't they?" Petunia squeaked.

"Yeah." Harry blankly replied.

"Oh God, I th-thought Lily w-was making them up t-to s-scare me!"

Harry considered his aunt for a long moment.

"I wish she bloody had been." he said, turning round and heading back upstairs.

"Is Da...?" Dudley asked.

"Yeah; he's dead." Harry said. For a moment, he considered adding 'Sorry', but he decided not to lie.

"... aw hell."

Harry went and sprawled down on his bed, staring at the ceiling and ignoring the sounds of the ambulance that arrived a few minutes later.

He wasn't sure what the hell he was going to do now. What the Hell had Dementors been doing on Privet Drive? Where the Hell was Dumbledore and the 'protection' the headmaster had muttered about only five short days before?

And, more to the point, who was he going to have to kill for this?

Turnabout is fair play, right?

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Hermione was interrupted from her book by a tremendous CRASH as the owl came careening back through the window; she'd been attempting to read to distract herself from how freaked-out she was getting, but it hadn't worked.

The unfortunate bird landed down the side of the sofa in a cloud of feathers, and her letter went skittering across the floor.

Collecting it, she was shocked to find that virtually every word (even her address at the head of the parchment) had been scored out with a big fat black marker, and `Senserded' was written in wobbly red handwriting in the centre of each page.

There was an extra page too; this one bore, in the same wobbly handwriting:

"Dere Miss Grangy Maam

Yous Werds is beeyng Sensereded bekos yous Werds is beeyng Karles and wees is ool nowyng that Karles Werds is Kosts Lyfs!!!! Karles Werds is mayking ther Shipps getts Sunkd and ther Areyplayns getts Shotted Dawne and ther Valyerbl Pielots getts Deded!!!!!!

Is yous Wonts to be cyng Swostikkers abuv ther Bukkyking Ham Pallers playse??? Yous Lites they is Litered and yous is Not Nows ther is beeyng a Wor On!!! Wer is yous Arpers??? Yous is not hav ther Flakks or ther Serchyliters or ther Bom Shelterators and yous Are Rayd Syryn is Rustie bekos yous has Forgetted Are Superyoryoryty!!!

Yous is beeyng a Norty Persun and if yous is not Stopps tryng to Send Klasyfykated Werds to Sylly Buggers wot Choos Lemmuny Thyngs and sitts abowt wiv Rilly Norty Persuns wot hav Greesy Hare we is beeyng hav to kums rownds and Smakks yous Bum lots and lots and lots and lots and lots So Ther!!

Sinseerly

Ther Wor Departymenters!!!

Wees is Meens Itt!!!!"

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

The remaining Dursley family (with additional Potter) sat, clustered round the kitchen table at Number 4 Privet Drive, in a dull silence. Petunia had cried herself out some hours ago. Dudley was sat there with a blank look on his face, staring at his hands, which he was repeatedly opening and closing. Harry was holding the Webley (which contained a new set of conjured shells) as if it was his sole connection to reality.

All three were thinking about – and struggling to deal with – the events of the previous night.

The uncomfortable silence was finally broken by Dudley.

"Harry... what were them things what killed Da?"

"Dementors." Petunia said, suppressing a shudder.

"They guard Azkaban – that's my type's prison." Harry added.

"What'd that thing do to Da?"

"Ate his soul." Harry said.

Petunia's head tipped over and hit the table with a solid thunk.

"... fuck." Dudley muttered, clenching his fists. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

"Why'd they come here?" he eventually asked.

"I d-don't know." Petunia told him.

"I'm not sure, but they were probably after me, but I don't know why." Harry added.

Dudley nodded.

"Shoulda know."

"Yeah – it figures, doesn't it?" Harry sincerely shocked the youngest Dursley by agreeing. "I don't know who sent them, but they must've been in the, uh, in my kind's government. That's who's got control of those things."

"The Wizarding government." Petunia stated, not lifting her head. "Call them what they are."

"Um, you okay with the W-word now, mum?" Dudley checked.

"No, but it doesn't matter."

"... oh." Dudley muttered.

They lapsed back into a dull silence.

"I didn't know guns could kill those th-things, b- Harry." Petunia eventually said.

"Neither did I." Harry told her.

"Why'd you try?" Dudley asked.

"Well... it wasn't like I could just, you know, not do anything, and, well, I don't know much about Dementors – I don't know whether they get worse when they eat people, and I don't know if they can bust through doors."

"You said the Wizarding government probably sent them." Petunia said.

"Well, I guess; I can't think of anyone else who'd be able to." Harry admitted.

"The bastards killed Da." Dudley muttered, obviously on the same wavelength as Petunia. "Look, I know we ain't been so cool, right, but I wanna help get payback on them bastards any way I can, right?"

"What'd you be able to do anyway?" Harry asked him.

"Well I ain't much brainy, but I can heft stuff and I can throw a right mean punch and I reckon I can learn to like shoot straight, y'know?"

"Do you have a plan, Harry?" Petunia asked.

"Yeah." Harry said. "Well, I've been working on one."

"I want in." His aunt told him.

"Me too." His cousin agreed.

Harry nodded, had a root around in his jacket, and unearthed a certain mirror.

"Sirius... are you there?"

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Hermione realised she'd been walking round in circles for the last two hours.

Since the weird postage-intercept the previous evening, she'd attempted to write to Harry another five times, each of them futile.

She sighed to herself, realising that there was nothing to be done; she had to try to write to Dumbledore again, regardless of what the maniacal (not to mention uneducated) owl-interceptor had written; right now, Harry's only hope was that the headmaster would pull himself together, get his finger out, and get around to removing Harry from the immediate area of those bastard Dursleys.

Having written a short and very pointed letter to that effect, and coaxed Rupert out of under the bed (where the owl had taken to hiding) she tied the letter to the uncertain barn-owl's leg, and fixed the unfortunate bird with a level glare.

"You will take this to Albus Dumbledore." she growled. "You will not stop for anything. You will not divert. You will fly directly to Albus Dumbledore's office, and you will give this letter to him and him only. Otherwise, I will be finding out of owl tastes as good broiled as chicken. Is that clear?"

Rupert emitted a faintly worried-sounding hoot.

"Good. Now get going!"

The owl sprang from her desk and zoomed out the window.

As soon as he'd cleared the windowsill, he vanished upwards with a startled squawk, producing a cloud of feathers, and Hermione panicked.

Five minutes passed with her whirling round the room like a dervish, then Rupert came hurtling back into the room in yet another cloud of feathers (he was starting to look a bit baldy) accompanied by her letter to Dumbledore, which once more had pretty much its entire contents scrubbed out with black marker.

"Shit." Hermione said.

"TURNS OUTS THEM LIGHTSES!" A chorus of squeaky voices bellowed. "IS YOUS NOT KNOWING THERE IS BEING A WAR ON?"

A trio of very oddly-dressed house elves came flying in the window. They were clad in khaki shirts and trousers, gas masks, and black Tommy-style `tin hat' metal helmets with the letters `A R P' in white on the fronts, and they were ferociously brandishing what appeared to be kippers.

Hermione went off the side of her chair, and grabbed it in a desperate attempt to ward the rampaging elves off.

The trio of gas-masked elves laid into her with the kippers, bellowing things like, `Careless wordses is costs liveses!" and "Turns outs them lightses!' and "Yous is making the Great Wizard Harry Potter Sir very very very sad!'.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

"Uh, hi, Harry. Um, this isn't the best time."

"What? Are you okay? Um, what's going on?" Harry asked, wondering why half the mirror was covered by hand at Sirius's end.

"Er, well, y'see, me and an, um, friend, we're catching up on old times, right? Um, can this wait?"

"Well, not really. Er, look Sirius, last night two bloody Dementors turned up on the doorstep here and, well, Uncle Vernon's dead."

"... oh. OH! Oh holy shit, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm okay, I'm okay, but look, I can't think of anyone what isn't part of the government who could've sent them here – me and my aunt and my cousin gotta get the Hell out of here before any more show up, the bloody Ministry's trying to kill me and knowing them they'd be smug if Aunt Petunia and Dudley got it at the same time."

"Damn right you've got to! You get in touch with Bulstrode, I'll organise transport."

"We have a car." Petunia said, peering round Harry's shoulder.

"Right. Grab any weapons and money you've got in the house, and get the hell out! Harry, you make sure you grab your mum's book too, okay? Meet me at... uh, hang on, let me see... the service station next to Broughton roundabout, that's Junction One on the M55 just west of Preston. I'll be on a new Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail big-twin, black with a succubus painted on each side of the fuel tank, and I'll check past every hour, on the hour. What're you driving?"

"A silver BMW 7-series from early last year." Petunia said.

"Right, so a fancy German car with what, K-reg?"

"It's L-reg." Dudley helpfully provided, peering out the window at his deceased father's company car. "Um, L451 LAG. And it's got a Forest Grove car fresher hanging from the rear-view mirror."

"Thanks, kid; that helps." Sirius said, nodding. "Now get moving! Don't worry about your stuff, just lock the house behind you – we'll be able to get your gear later."

"Right." Harry said, rising to his feet.

Right then, the telephone rang.

Frowning, Dudley picked it up.

"Yo, Dursley place, Dudley speaking."

Dudley paused, turned several shades of puce, then offered the handset to Harry.

"Um, it's for you. It's a bird, and she sounds skelping mad!"

Harry put the handset to his ear.

"Hey, Harry here."

"Harry James Potter, you have got a lot of bloody explaining to do!" came a resoundingly pissed-off Hermione Granger voice. "I have just been jumped on by three house elves in gas masks and slapped with wet kippers to the point I can't sit down, and from what they were yelling it's YOUR FAULT!"

Harry removed the handset from his ear and gave it a quizzical look.

"What." he said. "The. Fuck?"

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Dear Millicent.

I hope you've talked to your dad about me renting that airfield, because I'm on my way right now. We'll be with you by this evening at the latest.

Sincerely,

Harry.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

As she got off the phone, having had Harry desperately trying to placate her, Hermione was a very annoyed young lady with a very sore posterior. Harry's blatant open-mouth-before-engaging-brain remark about kissing it better really hadn't helped.

Having got a bag of frozen peas out of her parents' deep-freeze and stuffed it down the back of her tights, she put most of her collection of cushions on her chair, and gingerly seated herself.

Ow.

She stood up, glared in the direction the trio of rampaging house elves had gone, picked up her notepad and textbooks, and went and laid on her front on her bed and tried to distract herself with quantum physics.

After about half an hour, her backside was quite numb and rather damp, so she went and put the now not-so-frozen peas back in the freezer and started rooting around for another bag of frozen veg, and it was then that she became very distracted from thoughts of house elves with kippers by a horrible realisation.

Managing to forget the pain in her arse, she ran back up to her room and started wildly casting around.

What had Harry said about getting in touch with him after they'd figured out he hadn't received any of her letters? What had he said? What had he said?

Dobby!

"Um, Dobby, can you hear me?"

Dobby appeared standing on her desk, and saluted her with the wrong hand.

"Miss Grangy Ma'am is looks for Dobby, yes?" the elf checked.

"Oh thank God! Dobby, you've got to warn Harry, he's got to get out of there! I've written two dozen letters to him in the last four days and he hasn't got any of them and I wrote his street address on all of them even though I sent them by owl and that means someone's got his address and I don't know what to do and Harry's got to get out of there because it isn't safe at Privet Drive any more oh God what have I done?"

"Miss Grangy Ma'am is breathes now, yes?" Dobby suggested. "Miss Grangy Ma'am is not needing to be the panics, Harry is being travels to Miss Milly Bulstyrode's place the now."

"OhthankGod." Hermione said, flopping down to sit on her bed. "OWshit!" She immediately popped back off of it as her posterior reminded her of it's current status.

To his credit, Dobby managed to maintain a straight face.

Pausing to survey his current appearance – an elf-sized version of an old-school British Army officer's uniform – Hermione frowned lightly.

"Dobby, I don't suppose you know exactly why I got jumped by three mad house-elves in tin hats and gas masks who slapped me with kippers?" she asked, sounding entirely too calm.

"Dobby is not being the sure." Dobby said, thoughtfully scratching his chin. "Hmm... Dobby is thinks Dobby is remembers being askded by the Arperers what to be being doing about the naughty peoples what is writing the classificated wordses and sends to peoples what is Not Needing To Be Knows. Dobby is saying that the classificated wordses is needs to be being sensorded and maybe if that is not works then elfses is needs to be being punishes the naughty personses what is writing the classificated wordses."

"You little - ...!" Hermione started to snap, but she cut off halfway through as she remembered how terrified she'd been for her best friend's safety, whereupon she burst into tears.

"Oh no, Dobby is makes Miss Grangy Ma'am very very sad!" Dobby gasped. "Dobby is being a naughty elf!"

Having removed his hat, he proceeded to bang his head on the side of her desk.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

The first man-made sound heard in the house in a decade and a half was the noise of boots on broken glass.; the glass was the remnants of the window that had been in the front door, and the boots were a set of knee-height bike boots on the feet of a wanted man named Sirius Black.

"Careful." the dog animagus warned. "There's glass all over the porch."

"What a mess." the teenage boy who'd been following him – Harry Potter – complained. "Damnit, what'd Voldemort use to open the door, a bloody hand-grenade?"

"A Reducto from the look of it, and a bloody powerful one. Er, what's a hand-grenade anyway?"

"It's a really really small bomb." Said another teenage boy, this one colossally overweight, as he stuck his head into the porch.

"I wouldn't come in here if I were you, Dursley." Sirius warned, holding up and hand to warn the fat kid off. "The floor's a bit rotten – you'd probably crash through it."

"Are you saying I'm fat?" Dudley Dursley growled, annoyed.

"Yeah, I'm saying you're fat." Sirius informed him.

"... er." Dudley said, backing off; he had absolutely no idea how to respond to that, since A) nobody had ever responded to the are-you-saying-I'm-fat line like that before and B) he'd just abruptly remembered Sirius was a convicted homicidal maniac.

"Why've we come here?" Harry asked, gingerly sweeping the bigger pieces of glass out of the way with his shoe.

"Well, first off I figure we'll be able to put your dad's ward-stone to good use." Sirius said, shrugging. "It's in the basement. Ey, Dursley, pass me that torch."

"Here y'go." Dudley doubtfully said, handing a flashlight over – Vernon had kept it in the car at all times in case of roadside emergencies after dark.

"How heavy is this ward-stone?" Harry asked.

"Bloody rock-solid, it's about half a hundredweight. I figure we'll be able to use one of the ladders your dad kept in the basement to slide it over the rotted bits of floor. Careful, that's rotten to fuck, it won't take any weight – we're right under your old bedroom and the hole in the side of the house must've been letting the rain in."

"This place is pretty much only fit for knocking down and building a new house." Harry complained, carefully stepping over the rot patches on the floorboards.

"Shame, isn't it?" Sirius agreed. "It was a beautiful building – three hundred bloody years old, this place housed five generations of Potters counting you. I figure once we've won this war we can strip the wood out and rebuild the house, the walls are probably still sound. Hey, that used to be my bedroom after Wallaburgia kicked me out of Black Manor. The one beside was your dad's room."

"Do you think there'll be much of Mum and Dad's stuff left in here?" Harry asked.

"Nah, Hagrid and Arthur recovered everything and Dumbledore stored it someplace, but I don't know where – I was inside at that point." Sirius smirked, selected a specific knot-hole in one wall, and gave it a tug, causing a portion of wall to open; this revealed a steep flight of stairs going down. "Good thing the basement's behind a secret door, isn't it?"

"... huh." Harry muttered, following Sirius down the steps; the man shone the flashlight around, muttering to himself.

"Oh boy."

"What? What's wrong?"

"Nothing, apart from about a foot of water on the floor. Where the hell was that damn ward-stone?"

"Er, are you sure it's down here?"

"Yeah, yeah, it was somewhere right over where-"

Sirius hadn't meant to stop there, but he changed his mind when Harry tripped over with a tremendous splash.

"... you are. I think you found it, Harry."

"Bloody! Hell!" Harry spluttered; he was covered in muck. "Aw, this is bloody disgusting! Yecch!"

"Aw, quit whinging, you've been splattered by worse in Snivellus's dungeon."

"Sirius, you're an arse." Harry complained, rooting around at what he'd tripped over.

"Yup, that's the ward-stone. Well stumbled upon."

"Arse."

Sirius just snorted and hooked a ladder down from the wall; swearing all the way, the two of them managed to hump the lump of filthy rock Sirius called a ward-stone onto the ladder and slide it up the stairs, along the hall, and into the porch.

"What the dickens have you two been getting into?" Petunia immediately complained, seeing the state of them, especially Harry.

"The basement's got a foot of muddy water in it and Harry found the ward-stone the hard way." Sirius told her; Harry just muttered and grumbled while vanishing the worst of the mud and water from his person; he went to do the same to the stone, but Sirius stopped him.

"Careful, you don't want to use magic on that, it could muck the runes up. Er, Petunia, don't suppose you've got a tarp or anything in that car?"

"No." Petunia said with a sigh. "But if you really think that old rock's useful, I suppose you can clean inside the car later."

"Deal." Sirius said, nodding, and with some grumbling assistance from Dudley they humped the stone into the driver's side back seat of Vernon's car, where Petunia insisted that they strap it down with the seatbelt.

"Right, that's that, now for the car."

"Car? What car?" Petunia asked, sounding a bit defensive.

Sirius grinned and angled a thumb round the side of the house; following him round, they were met by what had once been a Morris Ten.

"That car." he said.

"Oh, man – this is bad." Harry muttered, staring at the heavily-decayed vehicle.

"It's a crying shame, that's what it is." Petunia sniffed. "Who left such a lovely old car to rot away like this? My father used to drive a Morris Ten, but it certainly wasn't in such a terrible condition!"

Right enough, the Morris didn't look like much. There was rust everywhere – the paint was a long-forgotten memory – the windscreen was cracked, the driver's door window had been left down and a bird had nested behind the steering wheel, the seat covers had rents in them showing half-rotted stuffing, and it was sunk to it's axles in mud.

Sirius just grinned, switched the ignition on, and heaved on the cranking handle.

The engine choked a couple of times, each time causing Sirius to give the crank-start another yank, emitted a deafening backfire that spat a great cloud of dirt and rust flakes (and one very startled mouse) out the exhaust pipe, then caught, spitting a great cloud of black smoke before it settled into a rough and unhealthy spluttering series of mismatched firings that sounded as if they might have been supposed to be an idling engine.

"I built my other bike to look good." he said. "That's why it's needing so many repairs. Lily built her car to be bloody nearly indestructible."

The Morris backfired a couple more times, spitting further clouds of black smoke and bits of mouse nest, but kept chugging. Sirius opened the driver's door, having to give it a couple of hearty heaves; leaning in, he gave the throttle a nudge, causing another deafening series of backfires and clouds of flying dirt before the engine caught up with itself and revved furiously; slipping into the seat, he spent a few moments chucking the bird's nest out the door, then put the car into gear and gave it another mighty rev.

It lurched forwards about six inches and bogged down, so he stuck it in reverse and gave it another try.

It took about twenty minutes, but by rocking the car back and forth like that, they eventually got it to haul itself out of the mud in which it had stood for nearly a decade and a half.

Once it was sitting on tarmac rather than resting in mud on it's chassis rails, Harry gave the chugging monster a close examination and decided that it looked even worse from this angle. The passenger's door was rusted shut, while the boot lid was held on by fencing wire. The seat covers were largely made from decomposed duct tape, as was the steering wheel's skin. Now that the mud was dripping out of it, he could see light through the rust holes in the floor. One of the rear lights was absent, and a small bird was watching him from where the lamp should be, seemingly unconcerned by it's home moving around, even when the barely-idling car let out another tremendous window-rattling series of backfires. The headliner was missing, revealing some flakes of what had once been paint. And last but not least, it seemed to be sitting on it's wheels at a peculiar angle.

"Bloody hell, are you sure this thing is, well...?"

"Oh yes, it's worth it." Sirius told him.

"Um, why?"

"Because it was sitting exactly where your mum left it and, well, it wasn't any less of a mess back then." Sirius explained, getting out and leaving the car struggling to idle.

"What do you mean?" Petunia asked. "Heavens, it's been what, fifteen years?

"Yah, about. Lily never had the chance to restore this car." Sirius said, patting the Morris on the bonnet. "She got it off the scrappers just up the road for the price of a six-pack of Newkie Brown; it was pretty shot but the engine sort of ran. After the way James wrecked her previous car, she concentrated on making this one indestructible first in case her bone-head husband tried to drive through another tree."

Petunia shook her head, tut-tutting. The car seemed as if it was going to conk out, but spat another belch of black smoke and dirt and kept chugging away.

"I know there's a lot of good stuff we can learn from looking at what your mum did with this car, Harry. Now c'mon, let's head for your friend's place."

Sirius moved to get onto his bike.

"Hey, how're we gonna get both cars there?" Dudley asked.

"Well, either I can drive the car or my bike, and I'm not leaving the hog here." Sirius said, shrugging. "And I guess your mum'll be driving her car. So I guess Harry's gonna have to drive the Morris; no offence, kid, but I'm not sure if it'd run with a muggle behind the wheel."

"S'okay." Dudley said, shrugging.

"You mean, I'm supposed to drive this scrap-heap?" Harry complained.

"Well, yeah. Just remember to keep the revs up when you change gears."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Petunia doubtfully asked.

"No, but that just goes to show it's worth trying." Sirius told her. She stared blankly at him for several moments, then admitted defeat with a groan and headed for the BMW.

"I like that bloke." Dudley conspiratorially told Harry. "He's mental." He then followed his mother.

Harry looked from Morris to Petunia to Sirius and back several times, then sighed and climbed into the ancient car, expecting it to fall to bits any moment.

It took him four tries to get the door to stay closed, whereupon he found that the door window was missing instead of open.

Increasingly bemused, he experimented until he was certain that was the clutch, put the car into gear, let the handbrake off, swore as the Morris started rolling backwards, stepped on the throttle and started letting the clutch out.

More black smoke and rust showered out the back as, engine revving wildly, the old car started to move.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

The procession that came jolting up the dirt track into the Bulstrode barnyard drew prompt and immediate comment.

Leading the three vehicles was a very new Harley-Davidson motorcycle with a licentious paintjob on the fuel tank, ridden by a tall thin wild-haired man clad in black leather and no helmet.

Behind it was a new-ish and rather fancy silver BMW executive saloon car, which looked even more horribly out-of-place in a barnyard. It had a somewhat scrawny-looking woman with frizzy orange hair, a lantern jaw and a neck a bit like a plucked chicken behind the helm, accompanied by a decidedly overweight teenage boy in the passenger seat.

At the rear of the trio was a scrap-heap that seemed to have once been a car. It was obviously being driven by a complete rookie, as it proceeded to stop dead in it's tracks with a horrific squeal of brakes and stall.

After kicking the door several times, it's intrepid pilot climbed out, revealing himself to be none other than...

"You stalled it, Harry!" the biker declared, pointing an accusing finger.

"Are you daft? Of course I bloody stalled it, I've never driven a bloody car before, and I don't think it was the best idea to start with a sodding_ wreck!_" Snapped Harry Potter.

"You can probably do it up." the fat kid said, climbing out the BMW. "I saw this show about doing up old cars on the telly and some of them looked way worse'n that, and when they were done they looked well sorted."

"A lovely old car like that deserves to be restored." the chicken-necked woman sniffed, likewise climbing out the BMW.

That was when Nicholas Bulstrode came ambling over, removing his pipe from his mouth.

"Arry Potter, is it?" the stoic old farmer checked.

"That's me." Harry confirmed.

"Our Millie said ye'd be 'ere." Nick said, nodding, and paused to puff at his pipe. "Wantin' ter rent t'airbase, are ye?"

"Yes, that's the plan. I mean, if you're cool with it?"

"Well, t'aint like Oi'm usin' t'airbase." Nick had another puff at his pipe, thoughtfully contemplating the teenager. "Ye care t'introduce me t' yer pals?"

"Er, sure. This is my aunt, Petunia, and my cousin Dudley. And, um, this is my godfather, but before anyone has an, er, situation about him being here, he kinda never got a trial and he's innocent."

Nick paused, and gave the biker a measuring look.

"Well bugger Oi down flat." he said, meaningfully adjusting the shotgun he had hooked under one arm. "Sirius bludy Black, is it?"

"In person." the biker in question admitted, suddenly skittish.

"Aye, aye. Well, Oi'll tell ye straight, boyo. Iff'n yeh harm a bludy man-jack o' me family Oi'll be givin' yeh an arse full o' buckshot afore Oi bother callin' t'bludy fuzz, yeh hear me?"

"Yup, that's perfectly clear." Sirius immediately responded.

"It'd bludy better be." Nick paused again, placidly tapping his pipe out. "Oi reckon we'd best be headin' inside t'ouse t'talk business, time's a-wastin'."

-/- End Chapter -/-


	4. Chapter 3

**This ain't no self-insert fic.**

**This ain't no slash fic neither.**

**This is the Book of Dobby.**

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"_Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: 'Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar.' As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be."_

Prime Minister Winston Churchill,

May 19th 1940.

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Nicholas Bulstrode, variously known as Nick, Big Nicky, Mr Bulstrode or Farmer Nick, was not by any stretch of the imagination a small man.

Far from it; he was the biggest farmer in Lancashire, if not the whole of Britain. He stood seven foot ten inches tall, and was easily four and a half feet across the shoulders; his muscles resembled thick steel cables, and had the power of a good back-hoe behind them; his biceps were thicker than most men's waists, his hands like wrecking balls and his wrists similar in diameter to a big man's thigh. He'd been known to hold small tractors up so a wheel could be changed, and on one famed occasion when a prize Aberdeen Angus bull got loose and angry at a show, the massive greying-haired farmer had stepped in front of his family, stood his ground, and knocked two tons of angry beef senseless with a single punch.

Fifteen years later it was still a hot topic for discussion in village pubs throughout Lancashire.

In temperament, he was said to be as placid as his cattle; he rarely raised his voice, and the occasions on which he raised his fists were even fewer and further between.

Of course, the four people who his wife, Annabel Bulstrode (formerly Murchison) was currently plying with home-baked biscuits and tea across the other side of the Bulstrode's huge kitchen table didn't know that, and Nick didn't yet feel any need to inform them of this; he rarely raised his voice because he hardly ever needed to. Just seeing nearly eight feet of broad-shouldered barrel-chested slab-handed bushy-sideburned farmer walk over and quietly ask if there was some sort of problem was enough to end most fights before they'd started.

"Our Millie's sayin' ye plan t'fight t'bludy Dark Lord." he said, without preamble. "Now, iff'n t'were all o' it Oi'd have me doubts iff'n yeh could do it, but that thar ain't all our Millie's sayin'. She's sayin' ye plan t'take t'Ministry down."

Harry nodded.

"Yeah. That's the plan." he said.

"Ow'd Oi know ye won't be bringin' t'Ministry down on me loik a ton o' bludy bricks?"

"Fidelius charm." Sirius piped up. "Along with a few other tricks I've been cooking up, it ought to make sure the bloody Ministry never work out where we are until it's way too late."

Nick nodded slowly.

"Yeh." he said. "That'd work, Oi reckon. But Oi don't want any o' mine gettin' caught in t'crossfire, iff'n yeh get me drift."

"I can't promise that." Harry stated, starting to get up. "I'd be a bloody idiot if I thought nobody's ever going to work out where we're attacking from."

"Sit yer arse down." Nick advised. "Oi reckon iff'n yeh have t'foresight t'say that, Oi'll be chargin' yeh five Galleons per week fer rent o' t'ol airbase. Tis water'n power yeh kin hook up ter, an' Oi kin hire ye a dozer t'clear t' access road fer five Galleons a day, but yeh'll have ter pay fer diesel an' any repairs. But first, tis summat yeh an' Oi have ter talk about in private, lad."

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**Disclaimer: You is Makes sure they is Sunk, you is Brings in yous Junk.**

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**The Holy Testament of Dobby.**

**Per Arcana ad Astra**

**A Doghead13 fanfic**

**Written & produced by Calum J 'Doghead13' Wallace**

**Preread by the CaerAzkaban Yahoo group.**

**Brought to you by Hairy Scottish Git Productions, GMBH**

**Dedicated to those incredible people who spent the best part of the 1940's saving the world – and to everyone who's followed in their footsteps since.**

**This is not a drill.**

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**Chapter 3: Waking the Dead.**

**(In which an old soldier awakens.)**

Stepping out the house into the bustle of the farmyard, Harry wasn't quite sure what to expect as he followed Mr Bulstrode across the way.

The huge farmer moved slowly, surely, with an odd certainty almost like a mountain that'd hauled up it's roots and gone walkabout, exchanging greetings and commentary about the work with the varied farm hands as he passed.

He finally stopped beside the tractor shed, and started filling his pipe.

Harry waited as the big man lit up.

"Millie's callin y' 'er master." Nick Bulstrode finally remarked.

"She is?" Harry asked, giving the man a side-on look.

"Yeh." Nick said. He took a couple puffs at his pipe. "Now, our Millie's a sensible lass, fer all she 'as them per-culiar ideas, an' she trusts ye, so Oi'm givin' ye tha benefit o' t'doubt."

He put his pipe back in his mouth.

"Oi jest want ye ter know, Potter, iff'n ye get yin o' mine killed, there'll be a bludy _reckonin_'."

"She trusts me." Harry said. "I've only ever been trusted like that once before."

He gave Nick Bulstrode a long hard look, and the huge farmer suddenly knew why his daughter said that this young man was going to save the world.

"If _anything_ happens to her," Harry said, his voice soft and deadly, "_Your_ revenge will have to _wait_ until _mine_ is _complete_."

Nick considered that for a long time, then let out a great booming bellow of laughter and gave Harry a bone-rattling slap on the back.

"Tis what Oi loike t'hear." he said, still chuckling as he headed back to the house.

As they were entering the kitchen, Dobby appeared with a pop in the middle of the table, raising startled squawks from Petunia and Dudley.

"Dobby is has very importyant classificated communicerations for Mr Harry Potter Sir, Sir." The elf declared, saluting.

"What? Who from?" Harry asked, surprised.

"Miss Grangy Ma'am, Sir!"

"... oh, right." Harry said, expecting Hermione to still be mad at him as he accepted the letter, which was in a muggle-style envelope and had 'Classificated Top Secreymost' and 'For Eyses of Mr Harry Potter Sir Only' written all over it in wobbly un-Hermionelike handwriting.

Bemused, Harry opened it and began to read:

'Dear Harry,

In the last four days, I have sent you a total of fifty-seven letters and you haven't replied to any of them. What's going on? I asked Dobby to take this to you because owls don't seem to have been working. Are you okay? Those blasted Dursleys haven't done anything to you, have they? Dobby said you were going to the Bulstrodes' place, is that right?'

The letter, as well as actually being in Hermione's handwriting, went on in that vein for five pages of closely-spaced paranoia; once he'd ploughed all the way through, Harry sat back with a low whistle and shake of his head.

"Er, I think I've gotta answer this – anyone got some paper and a pencil?"

He was at once handed paper and pencil by a proudly beaming Dobby.

"Thanks."

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Dear Hermione.

Well, I'd written you four times, and hadn't received anything from you. I guess something's been intercepting our owls; I just asked Hedwig and she looked very doleful and apologetic, so there must be something in it, especially as she was being, well, hesitant about taking letters when I sent the third one.

Talking of which, since when have you had an owl, and how come it took you until you were completely mad at me to think of phoning?

Anyway, right enough I'm now at the Bulstrode farm. Oh, Mr Bulstrode just told me to tell you 'use the floo any time' and that his Floo address is 'Long Wall Farm'. I am remembering right that those whatsisnames (Finch-Fletchley?) just across town from yours have a connection and said you could use it?

Anyway, we're going to camp out here tonight (Mr Bulstrode just said he'd sort us out space to sleep in the big hay barn) and get mucked into bulldozing tomorrow morning.

Hopefully speak to you soon,

Harry.

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Slowly setting the letter down, Hermione released a heartfelt sigh of relief.

Okay, she felt pretty stupid now. She should have phoned him as soon as it became apparent that her letters couldn't be getting through.

But how the hell was their mail being intercepted anyway?

Suddenly realising something, she turned round and gave Rupert the Owl a death-glare.

"Have you," she growled, "Been taking my letters to the wrong person?"

The unfortunate owl obviously decided discretion was the better part of valour as he rocketed off out the window and flew for it with Hermione screaming "Come back here and get what's coming to you, you spying bastard bird!" after him.

There was a solid thwap and startled squawk as the thrown copy of 'Hogwarts: A History' impacted the fleeing owl amidships, knocking him completely off course; as the book slammed into and knocked over the bird-bath, the owl went zooming straight into the side of Mrs Thorpe next door's greenhouse, bouncing off and landing in a heap in the middle of the Granger's lawn.

Storming downstairs past her gobsmacked parents, Hermione rapidly arrived on the scene of Rupert's crash-landing and picked him up by the wings.

"Alright you sodding ball of feathers, you owe me an explanation and it'd better be a good one or we're having owl soufflé for dinner tonight, is that CLEAR?"

Rupert blinked, shaking the collywobbles out of his head, then focused on the enraged girl and let out a nervous-sounding hoot.

"Is everything okay, Hermione?" her mother asked, sticking her head out the house.

"This bastard bird's been diverting my god-damned mail!"

Jeff glanced at Anne. Both of them knew that their usually-uptight daughter did not as a rule swear unless she was enraged beyond any semblance reason, at which point it was usually best to get out the way until the bushy-haired whirlwind had played out.

"Alright, feather-brain!" Hermione barked. "I'm going to say a series of names, and when the one you've been taking Harry's letters to comes up, you're going to nod. Understood?"

Rupert nodded rapidly.

"It'd better be. Voldemort?"

Rupert looked highly offended and shook his head.

"Cornelius Fudge? Rita Skeeter? Lucius Malfoy?" Hermione asked. Each of these was responded to with an increasingly offended head-shake.

"Albus Dumbledore?" Hermione's father suggested.

Rupert nodded wildly, squawking.

"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT FOR, BIRD-BRAIN?" Hermione bellowed.

Rupert let out a nervous squawk.

"Er, it's an owl, Hermione. It can't talk."

"Oh. Yeah." Hermione gave the owl a venomous look and dropped him. "You'd better get the hell out of here before I barbecue you, feather-brain."

The owl didn't need to be told twice.

"Albus sodding Dumbledore!" Hermione growled, shaking her head. "I'll give him a piece of my mind when I catch up with him!"

"Hermione, you've got to calm down." Anne advised.

"Shove it, Mum. I'm in a mood." With that, Hermione went rampaging back upstairs to her bedroom, turning the air blue as she went.

"... wow." Anne said.

"We've got to have a word with Allan and Mark about squaddie language in front of children." Jeff remarked.

"... I don't think Hermione's a child any more." Anne told him.

Staring up at Hermione's bedroom window, where he could now see a certain bushy mane of brown hair near the desk, Jeff nodded sadly.

"We need Dan, Mark and Tim." he said. "If anyone can understand what she's going through, it's those three old bandits." Dan was Jeff's elder brother and a career soldier in the Coldstream Guards; Mark and Tim were Anne's brothers. Mark was the gunner in a Challenger tank; Tim drove Tornadoes. Between the three of them, they'd stacked up years of combat duty in the Falklands, the Gulf, and a dozen other trouble spots the world over, some of which the British Army had never officially been anywhere near.

Those three warriors were all too familiar with shellshock, and if anyone could help Hermione, it was them.

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"So someone's interfering with your mail." Sirius said.

"Prek." Hedwig said, looking ashamed.

"It's happened before. Summer after second year, just after you got out of prison." Harry told Sirius. "Oh, Hedwig, it's not your fault – Dobby's good at being persuasive."

Hedwig looked at her feet and rattled her beak.

"Here, girl." Harry said, offering Hedwig a piece of bacon which she gratefully accepted, much to the bemusement of Petunia and Dudley.

"Prrek." Hedwig said, pausing to affectionately nibble on Harry's ear.

"Someone's been intercepting you again, haven't they?" he asked her.

She let out a miserable-sounding beak-rattle and nodded, head drooping.

"I wonder who it was and how they done it." Dudley mused. "I mean, look at the size of that bird's claws! I sure wouldn't want to mess with a bird like that, it'd be more than my bloody eyeballs are worth."

Hedwig gave him a smug look and said, "Prrrek."

"Hedwig... who was it intercepting you? Was it Voldemort or the Ministry?"

The snowy owl shook her head, looking highly offended and rattling her beak at Harry.

"So... um, who was it?" he asked.

By way of a reply, Hedwig hopped onto Mrs Bulstrode's counter-top, picked up a lemon from the fruit bowl, and meaningfully dropped it.

"... whaa...?"

Hedwig picked the lemon up and dropped it again.

"Er, falling fruit?" Harry tried, earning himself an annoyed beak-rattle and repeat of the pick up, drop lemon.

"Lemon... drop." Petunia said.

"Prrrrek!" Hedwig confirmed, nodding.

"Lemon drop? It wasn't Professor Dumbledore was it, girl?" Harry asked.

Hedwig nodded.

"That senile beardy sweet-guzzling goat-fondling twinkled-toed sock-fixated old sodding wanker!" Sirius declared. "I'll give him a piece of my mind when I catch him!"

"Hey, we might be able to use this." Dudley remarked. "We could feed him wrong intel or something like that, you know, like spies and stuff?"

"Wait a minute, why the hell would Dumbledore intercept my mail?" Harry asked.

"Buggered if I know." Sirius said. "I mean, for Merlin's sake, it's obvious you'd notice something was going on seeing as how he didn't get it delivered."

"He said something about me needing privacy." Harry muttered. "Peace and fucking quiet to 'deal with' Cedric getting killed."

"What utter rot." Petunia sniffed. "It doesn't take a psychologist to tell you that people need their support network to cope with a sudden unexpected crisis."

"Er, I think I'd better phone Hermione... um, Mr Bulstrode, can I use your phone?"

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Harry having spoken to Hermione on the phone and compared notes, what remained of the day was spent surveying the old airbase. It was overgrown having been used for nothing but grazing cattle in the last thirty-five years, and there wasn't much left of the buildings aside from a decidedly tumbledown aircraft hanger, but several minutes of Sirius doing something arcane and complex with his wand and Point Me charms at ground level demonstrated that what had been the runway was still pretty flat.

By nightfall they were all well and truly exhausted and so, after being plied with home-cooked food by Mrs Bulstrode, they headed to the hay barn Mr Bulstrode had said they could sleep in, spent half an hour spreading blankets and sleeping bags on bales, and at Petunia's insistence erecting a wall of bales to preserve her loudly-trumpeted modesty.

However, the three males found themselves decidedly wired.

They'd been laying awake and listening to the small noises of Mr Bulstrode's prize bull moving around from the barn next door for half an hour when Sirius asked, "So what's the big plan, Harry?"

Harry frowned at the barn's distant ceiling.

"I'm not totally sure." he said. "From what I've been reading in the Daily Prophet, either Voldemort's laying low or the Ministry's suppressing all news about the Dark Wanker's crap. I'm sick of reacting, Sirius. I want to be the guy people are reacting to." He gestured in the vague direction of the old airbase. "Once we've got the runway cleared up and that hanger rebuilt, well, planes and bombs time. And then we announce our joining this game by blasting Riddle Manor and Malfoy Manor into fucking great piles of rubble."

"You realise the government's probably gonna start going on about whoever's controlling these planes being a Dork Lord?" Sirius asked.

"Yeah, I figure that much." Harry confirmed. "What we need is a logo nobody's ever going to forget, but it doesn't say 'Hey, bad guy here' like a snake violating a skull. Then we start announcing our strikes by sending messages to the Prophet at the same time as the bombs are falling... saying something like, 'Such-and-such has been determined to be an Enemy of Civilisation. His den of iniquity has ceased to exist'. We need addresses for the places we need to hit."

"We can get addresses. Your mad elf mate can get them for you."

"Right. Heh, this is going to be fucking awesome – well, once we've got some planes."

"The only ones I can think of are in museums." Dudley said.

"There are quite a few buried here and there all over the country, in the English channel, in the North Sea – every other place." Petunia helpfully added from over the far side of the stack of hay-bales. "All left-over from the war. It's illegal to dig them up, war graves don't you know, but I don't suppose you two care about that."

"If that's what we've got to do, well..." Sirius sighed. "Look, Petunia. We're people who can do magic, not inevitably arseholes. I'm with that whole not-messing-with-graves thing, but, y'know, if we haven't got any other choice..."

"Um, Sirius, you realise that once we've got one of a plane running, we can transfigure copies out of scrap metal?" Harry pointed out.

"... why the Hell didn't I think of that? Right! Tomorrow we're gonna go check out a whole load of museums!"

"... why the Hell didn't I think of that?"

"I suppose you're too close to the problem." Petunia chirped up. "It's often the way."

"Whatcha mean?" Sirius asked.

"Mom means you gotta step back and look at stuff from another angle. I think." Dudley said. "Ey, what's transfiglerate anyway?"

"That's transfigure. Turning one thing into another." Harry said.

"It's how you turn people into toads." Sirius added.

"It doesn't last very long on living things though so you can stop freaking out now, and if you try to transfigure something complex – like, say, a pile of bits of wood into a desk – it'll fall apart pretty soon." Harry put in.

"Oh right." Dudley said. "Ey, are you sure it'd be safe to make like airplane parts by transmiglorating scrap metal?"

"Should be." Sirius said, unable to be bothered correcting Dudley's pronunciation. "As long as we prepare the metal right and enchant it for permanence. It's fiddly work, but it should be do-able."

They lapsed into silence for a couple minutes.

"Hey, uh, Aunt Petunia, how come you worked out what Hedwig was trying to say so fast with that whole lemon drop thing?" Harry eventually asked.

From over her side of the bales, Petunia let out a dry chuckle.

"I've always been good at charades." she said. "It's a knack. Now how about piping down over there? I need some sleep, its been a long day."

"Yeah... g'night Aunt Petunia."

"G'night Mum."

"Goodnight, boys."

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Harry stood and boggled up at the rusty yellow caterpillar-tracked monster.

The massive bulldozer stood fully thirteen feet tall, towering over even the huge Massey-Ferguson MF-8100 heavy-duty agricultural tractor that stood beside it, and making the JCB back-hoe loader the other side look like a toy. Every one of the many years of faithful service the dozer had given was clear to see in each stain, dent, scrape and patch of rust on its battered hide as it stood foresquare, silent and foreboding; even it's blade towered far over Harry's head.

When he'd first seen the bright red century-old steam locomotive that hauled the Hogwarts Express, he'd been impressed. This filthy battle-scarred travel-stained yellow beast impressed him just as much as that locomotive, and possibly more so; the thought that he might someday be at the helm of the Express had little more than brushed the back of his mind, and now here he stood, presented with a bulldozer that from his perspective seemed the size of a small house and told that, in a few moments, his hands would be on that beat-up behemoth's controls.

Dudley definitely wasn't helping either.

"Woah, what a beast!" the overweight boy declared. "It's awesome!"

Nick Bulstrode let out another one of his bellowing guffaws of laughter.

"Ar, tha ol' girl be quite a sight." he said, patting the bulldozer's blade. "Twenny-fawr years Oi've ad' 'er, an' Oi reckon she'll be foine fer another twenny-fawr. She's a Cat D9, tha Yank army uses her kind. Cat makes t'finest o' t'dozers, lad. Ye come on oop – Oi'll show ye 'ow ter run 'er."

Heart pounding in his chest, Harry followed the huge farmer up the ladder into the gargantuan machine's cab and, a steady smile on his face, Nick began to show the boy hero the dozer's controls.

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Exactly what Nick Bulstrode needed a forty-something ton bulldozer for around his farm was anyone's guess, but Harry was certainly glad to see it; it'd make clearing years of scrub and cattle wallows from the old airfield a hell of a lot easier.

Nick was now walking towards the John Deere combine harvester that occupied half the other end of the tractor shed; apparently, this year's wheat was doing superbly, and two fields were ready for harvest; Nick had smiled and said, with a contented nod, "It be a foine year fer t'wheat, Oi reckon."

"What a beast." Dudley repeated himself, ogling the dozer. "Man, it's really banged up ain't it?"

"Yeah – you can see this brute's put in some real work in its lifetime." Sirius agreed.

"So, what's the plan?" Petunia asked.

"Okay. Padfoot, if you can do whatever needs done to get that ward-stone set up, that'd be great. Aunt Petunia, please head down to that Land-Rover dealership Mr Bulstrode was talking about; thanks. Millie, if you could go with Aunt Petunia and help her pick out a good second-hander, that'd be great. Then you guys can work on getting those caravans we were talking about up here. I'll be getting stuck into bulldozing the access roads."

"What about me?" Dudley asked.

"Well, we'll need to know how sound that old hanger is, so if you can check it out that'd be great – I'll give you a ride up on the bulldozer. Just be careful, okay? Mr Bulstrode isn't sure whether that hanger's ready to come down or not."

"Yeah, I can do that." Dudley said, nodding solemnly.

"Right." Harry said. "Let's go to work."

Nodding, they separated, the two boys scrambling up onto the D9 and Sirius pausing to give Petunia a thick bundle of cash.

"This thing's a beast." Dudley repeated. He was starting to sound a bit like a stuck record.

"Just a bit, isn't it?" Harry said, surprised to find himself agreeing with his cousin.

"Prrek." Hedwig remarked, landing on the back of the seat.

Then conversation became impossible as Harry started the engine, the badly-silenced diesel roar blasting from the dozer's rusted exhaust, ripping the quiet away and drawing a complaining beak-rattle and flap of wings from a certain owl.

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As she stepped out of the Bulstrodes' fireplace, Hermione Granger was very worried indeed.

The subject of her worrying wasn't currently a hugely unusual one; worrying about Harry was becoming almost reflexive.

"Mornin' Miss 'Ermione." Millicent said; the hefty girl was standing at a worktop, cutting slices of brown home-baked bread.

"Morning, Millicent." Hermione said, glancing around and discovering her surroundings to be a rather traditional farmhouse kitchen.

The room had a fire at each end – at the end Hermione had exited the Floo through, a great open fire with a chain hanging out the chimney and bench-like stone structures each side of it, contained by the immense hollow of the fireplace itself, at the other end a vast black metal range with several saucepans simmering away on it. The floor was aged timber, the walls almost entirely clad in shelves and cupboards and worktops and sinks, and the ceiling appeared to be the floor of the room above from it's structure and the great black wood beams, from which hung long strings of onions, shallots and garlic, myriad sprigs of herbs, and a wild assortment of hard sausages. A pair of Border collies were interestedly watching her from where they were relaxing in front of the range, while most of the middle of the room was occupied by a huge, immensely solidly-built wooden table and it's array of straight-backed chairs.

"Oi'm just puttin' some grub tergether fer t'others." Millicent said. "Them's on t'way down from t'airfield." She angled a thumb towards the sturdy wooden door on the other side of the room from her current position, through which Hermione could hear the rattle of an approaching engine. "That'll be them t'now."

Hermione didn't have to be told twice; she was out that door like a shot, and then out the door the other side of the spacious porch in which she then found herself as the Land-Rover clattered into silence.

As she exited the building – a large and very old-fashioned Northern English farmhouse, obviously built then added onto with all sorts of higgledy-piggledy extensions as the decades rolled by – she received a series of surprises one after another.

Firstly was the fact Harry was just climbing out of the driver's seat of the Land-Rover – a rather disreputable specimen of the species that had obviously spent half of its life up to the axles in cow shit – and secondly, rather than wearing either his Hogwarts uniform or somewhat too-large sportswear, he was dressed in a dirty camouflage-print battledress jacket, an equally dirty Iron Maiden T-shirt, extraordinarily dirty denim jeans, and a set of decidedly muddy combat boots.

Thirdly was one of the two people currently climbing out of the Land-Rover's pickup-style loadbed, and the woman currently climbing out of the passengers door; Dudley and Petunia. On the other hand, Sirius Black, having a lot less trouble getting out the loadbed than Dudley, she'd expected. But Dursleys?

"What're those two doing round here?" Hermione doubtfully asked.

"Them fucking dermenterater thingies killed me dad." Dudley growled, and angled a thumb at Harry. "An' I reckon Harry's me best chance of settin' things straight."

"Dermente... you mean Dementors?" Hermione gasped, suddenly going very pale.

"Yeah, that's the one."

"Oh my God!" Hermione whirled round and pounced on Harry, attempting to discern if he was okay by Braille. "What happened? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine." Harry declared, trying to ward her off.

"Them Demeter thingies aren't though." Dudley said, sounding positively gleeful. "Harry blew 'em to bits with a big gun!"

"You what?" Hermione, Sirius and Millicent (who had just come out of the farmhouse) blankly chorused, turning to boggle at Harry.

By way of a reply, Harry withdrew a handgun from inside his camouflage jacket. It was a type Hermione recognised thanks to her gun nut of an uncle; a Webley officer's revolver.

However, she'd never seen one decorated like that before.

Harry unlatched the top strap, folded the barrel forwards, and extracted six shells; he spent a moment checking that the gun was clear, then clicked it shut and handed it to her.

"Harry, where did you get this?" she asked, critically examining it. It had a lot of inlaid gold, almost but not quite enough to make it look gaudy, and a Latin inscription on each side of the pistol grip.

"It used to belong to his great-granddad." Sirius said. "Lily left it with me shortly before... well, you know, Halloween '81 and all that. I had it stashed at my old house. The decorations are new though."

" Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici." Hermione read. "That means something like... 'By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.' I think."

"It and that eagle-looking thingy appeared when I shot the Dementors, and it was kinda blue-grey before that." Harry told her.

"He kinda, well, flashed, right, and there was this sort of ripple come out of him, right," Dudley said, "It looked kinda like that bit-of-reality-not-fitting like when the Predator's got its cloak thingy on. Then he went like Arnie on those thingies. I dunno when I started seeing 'em, but I think it was when Harry flashed."

"It was blue light." Petunia added. "Very bright, and there was this sort of not-a-sound sound a bit like the world was in a bell and someone rang it."

"There's several questions we really need answered." Hermione said, suddenly going into research mode and wishing she could get at the Hogwarts library. "Petunia and Dudley's description sounds a bit like accidental magic, but it wasn't a simple destructive surge. We really need to find out how you changed Petunia and Dudley, and what you did to that pistol." She started biting the tip of her thumb, like she always did when she was concentrating very hard.

Harry took the Webley back off her and slid the shells back in before stowing it in his jacket.

"First we need to secure the airbase." he said.

"Righty-ho," Sirius agreed, "Guess it's time for a Fidelius. I got the ward-stone set up earlier."

"A Fidelius?" Hermione asked. That rang a bell. "Isn't that the spell Harry's parents used when they went into hiding?"

"Yup, that's the one." Sirius confirmed. "We'll be using it a little differently to how James and Lily used it – instead of masking people, we'll be masking an area."

"Do you suppose we could use the ward-stone to anchor some other wards, like unplottability for a start? And do you know how to cast the Fidelius?" Hermione asked.

"Yeah; I helped Moony and Harry's mum research that damn thing. And yeah, but I don't think unplottability would be a good idea for an airbase." Sirius told her.

"Mebbe have yeh some grub first?" Millicent suggested. "Oi've made ye all sandwiches."

"Oh yeah, food. Great idea, I've got a hole in me middle." Dudley said. "Y'know, this is great stuff, Harry. You gotta work up a real good sweat to start burning off fat and building muscle, and I'm sweaty as all fuckery."

"You're getting pretty serious about this boxing stuff, aren't you Dudley?" Harry said.

"Yeah, Harr. I ain't never been much good at stuff what ain't hitting stuff, and mosta the time that's gonna mean trouble like rozzers kinda trouble, right? But boxing's different, means I can thump stuff and it's cool."

"Hey Hermione, what controls how long conjured items last?" Harry asked. "It's just I've kinda been wondering, right, because I conjured the shells into the Webley the night before last and they're still here."

"That's the second corollary to Blot's Law of Known Unknowns – you get back what you put out even if you haven't realised you're putting it out... wait, what, they've lasted two days?"

"Well, yeah."

"Damnit, I need books! Lots of books!"

Pop. Salute. "Dobby is being able to be sorts that out, Miss Grangy Ma'am!"

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

A doppler scream echoed through the hallowed halls of Hogwarts.

It went on and on and on, shaking dust from the rafters, rattling doors, tipping over suits of armour, causing Snape to have to dive for cover as his current potion reacted explosively to the sonic barrage, making McGonagall realise how long it was since she'd seen a really good piper, and causing Dumbledore to forcibly eject a lemon drop clean across the Great Hall.

The scream held words, in the voice of one Madam Pince:

"S O M E O N E ' S S T O L E N M Y L I B R A R Y !!!"

It soon transpired that, in the twenty minutes the Hogwarts librarian had spent having a (by her standards) leisurely lunch, some enterprising thief had completely emptied the entire library of Hogwarts, restricted section included.

When Dumbledore got back to his office to discover his bookshelves empty too, he was doubly shocked.

"My word, Fawkes, what on Earth happened?"

The phoenix's telepathic reply left Dumbledore even more puzzled.

What in the world was an 'Arp', how exactly did it sit upon one's head, and why in the world didn't Fawkes want to talk about it?

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Sirius had, while Harry spent most of the morning having the time of his life at the helm of a bulldozer, set up the ward-stone they'd salvaged from Godric's Hollow in the one structurally sound building on the old airfield – an old cargo container that Millicent had scrounged off her father and brought up there with a forklift, set up on footings made from scrounged concrete blocks over a good thick layer of sand halfway between the half-standing aircraft hanger (which Dudley had stated was, in his professional opinion, 'fucked') and the ruins of the old control tower.

Part of these preparations had been, according to Sirius, making sure the container didn't leak, this explaining the blobby stalactites of half-dried Mastik silicone sealant hanging from the ceiling and walls.

"Okay, so how's this going to go?" Harry asked.

"I've got the ward core all prepared." Sirius said, patting it. It looked somewhat more impressive now, all cleaned up and seated in a bed of sand held in place by concrete blocks that Sirius had fused to each other and the floor with some topical application of magic.

"You just need to put some of your blood into this series of indentations here." Sirius said, pointing. "We only had to use two for your folks; this time I think we'll need all seven."

"Wow, where'd you get this?" Hermione asked, finally coming out of her latest book. The caravan they'd designated as their site office currently looked like an explosion in a bookshop; there were dozens upon dozens of books scattered all over, most with multiple bookmarks hanging out of them, and eleven assorted notepads covered in shorthand scrawls – just the usual when Hermione went into hardcore research mode.

"Godric's Hollow." Sirius quietly told her.

"... oh."

"It's okay, I'm cool with it." Harry said, scratching his head as he contemplated the stone. Now it was cleaned up you could see the wall-to-wall tiny runes carved into its surface in complex patterns; aside from the runes, it just seemed to be a big old chunk of granite. "I think... I think Mum and Dad would've wanted me to use it if there was any way it'd do me any good."

"That's what I figured." Sirius agreed. "C'mon, let's get this thing activated."

And so they did. Having cut his finger, Harry let a few drops of his blood fall into each of the seven recesses at the top of the stone; the recesses flashed red, and the glow spread rapidly down the stone until every rune was illuminated. A brief chant later, and Sirius indicated they were done.

"That's it. The whole airfield's now protected." He said.

Harry frowned. "I don't feel any different."

"Not surprised. You wanna tell me where the airbase is so I can actually find the fucking place again next time I head out?" Sirius requested, and Harry burst out laughing.

Hermione blinked, then let out an embarrassed laugh.

"Um, me too please?" she requested.

"I'll third that." Petunia said with a sniff. "It's rather disconcerting not knowing where I am."

"Kinda creepy really." Dudley agreed.

Millicent just laughed.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Meanwhile, at the controls of the big John Deere combine, Nick Bulstrode frowned for a moment then let out a great booming bark of laughter.

"Tha lad works quick."

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Alfred Thorpe had at one time flown Hurricanes, and had survived the war with five kills to his name.

He wasn't famous for it – the nearest he'd come to that was being an ace's wingman – but nevertheless, he was one of the Few.

Today, he was doing something he liked to do on a quiet day. He had the luck to live only a half-hour's bus ride from Hendon, wherein he knew just where to find a very old friend.

This old friend weighed five thousand seven hundred and forty-five pounds with her tanks empty and no ammo in her guns, and had five crisp swastikas painted on the side of her fuselage just below and ahead of her cockpit canopy. He should know; he'd painted them himself back in the Forties when he had less wrinkles.

The fact that his trusty steed had survived the war right beside him brought the old man no small measure of pride. She'd done him well, that old plane – she wasn't as glamorous as the Spits, but it was the Hawker Hurricane that had been the true workhorse of the Battle of Britain, and little old Alfie Thorpe with his thinning hair, stooped back and walking stick was proud to have been one of the men who flow those dependable machines.

He was smiling as he ambled through the hall towards the plane. His plane.

"Hello again, my dear." he said, stopping beside her.

Of course, she didn't reply. She didn't have a voice to speak in without fuel in her tanks and ammo in her magazines, but he knew, fill her up and she'd sing that old song of hers.

"Morning, Mr Thorpe." one of the attendants – Gladys Pritchard, a charming young lady who worked at the museum weekends – said as she passed.

"Morning, Gladys." he said, not taking his attention off the old warbird. Gladys didn't mind that old Alfie seemed to be half-ignoring her; all the museum staff knew how the kindly old man felt about the plane he once flew.

"Oooh, look at this one." said a girl's voice.

"Hmm? Aw, what's the big deal, Hermione? It's just a Hurricane."

Alfie turned, but before he could take the speaker to task, the girl spoke for him.

"Don't be silly, Harry. I know it's the Spitfire everyone talks about, but the Hurricane did most of the work that won the Battle of Britain."

They made a nice couple, Alfie thought, and it was good to see a youngster who knew the truth about the old fighters. The boy wouldn't have looked out of place in a brand-new flightsuit back in '39, lanky lad with dark hair and a right old scar on his forehead; the girl was a pretty little thing, with huge amounts of frizzy brown hair and a charmingly earnest expression.

"Your ladyfriend knows her fighters, young man." Alfie said. "This old darling did me sterling service back in the war."

"You flew fighters?" the young lad asked.

"Ah, not just any fighters, mind! But we haven't been introduced; I'm Alfred Thorpe," And he gestured at his Hurricane, "And this is P2617*, a very old friend of mine; we used to hunt the Luftwaffe together."

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

* - P2617 is the real Hawker Hurricane Mk I on display at the RAF Museum in Hendon. However, I made up a pilot and history for her; no disrespect to the real aircraft or the people who flew her is intended.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

An hour later, ambling away from the museum to catch his bus, little old Alfie had a hundred-watt smile plastered all over his face.

It was such a treat to meet young folks with a true appreciation for real aircraft. They'd had a million and one questions, which he'd taken great glee in answering to the best of his knowledge; it was a beautiful day, and getting to bend ears about his very favourite subject made it just perfect.

They were still in there, pouring raptly over the planes, bless them.

Lovely young couple. They'd go far.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

"Man, I'm just about bushed." Harry complained, sitting down on the caravan steps with a flop. Hermione promptly seated herself beside him.

"Did you get the plans?" Sirius asked, coming round the side of the caravan. "Because, well, I got something you've gotta see..."

"Yeah, me and Hermione got 'em." Harry said, fishing a large and extremely packed folder out of his jacket; he deposited it on the steps. "And we managed to scan a dozen planes while nobody was looking, we'll get it all down on paper once we've had a bit of a sit-down. So, what've you found then?"

"C'mon over and have a look." Sirius said, looking smug.

Groaning, Harry heaved himself upright and shambled after his godfather, who was heading for the tumbledown old aircraft hanger.

"I thought Dudley said this thing's about to fall over?"

"Well, it was, but I remembered some stuff Arthur Weasely taught me back in the day – the spells he uses to stop the Burrow leaking or falling over. It's not as good as properly fixing a place up, but it'll do until we can build a new hanger. Oh, and I expanded the interior a bit while I was at it." Sirius said, heaving the hanger door open.

"Okay, so what've you got to... oh my god, what a mess."

The things Sirius had wanted to show Harry were a pair of vaguely aeroplane-shaped piles of rust and junk.

"What are they?" Hermione asked.

"I got in touch with a Dutch guy I used to know." Sirius said. "He used to work in draining new polders, that's what they call the places where they've pumped sea out – dunno how muggles get that to work, but whatever. Anyway, he knew where these were. He called them 'stukas'."

"They're pretty fucked up." Harry said, having a closer look. "Man, looks like they're completely made out of rust."

"Well, yeah, but I figure we can repair them." Sirius said, shrugging. "There's spells to revert rust damage and to stop any more happening, they're usually used for preserving family heirlooms like swords and stuff but I reckon they'll work just as good on planes, and hopefully there'll be enough bits to make one out of the two of them."

"Hmm... well, we got scans of a Stuka, they've got one in London." Harry mused, scratching his head. "And I guess even if we can't get either of these fixed up we can use them to compare to the scans, make sure that spell you showed me works right."

"Harry, just how many museums did you two visit in the last six hours anyway?"

"Nine. Why?"

Sirius just shook his head.

"You two see what you can do with these." Hermione said, indicting the rusting hulks. "I'll go get those scans copied down."

"Okay."

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

When Hermione headed for home at about eight in the evening, Harry and Sirius were still up to their ears in Stuka parts. Both planes, once the rust had been reverted, proved to have been shot down; they were riddled with holes and somewhat burnt, which led to Sirius teaching Harry a third spell, this one used to repair burn damage on valuables.

By the time an annoyed Petunia turned up and chivvied them into downing tools, getting cleaned up, eating something and going to bed, they'd turned the pair of wrecks into a large stack of parts and a mostly-assembled airframe with what was starting to look very like an engine in the front.

They were up bright and early the next morning, and back into the hanger clutching cups of coffee; they got stuck straight back into the plane, and went fast enough that, round about lunch time as she was walking up from the farm, Hermione could clearly hear the deafening series of missfires from the first attempt to turn the half-built Stuka's engine over.

She ran like a maniac, and was just skidding into the hanger as Harry gave it another go.

What had looked like a heap of parts last she'd seen was now very visibly an aircraft, even though it's tailplane and skin weren't on yet. The Junkers Jumo engine was immediately recognizable, as was the hunched-up cranked wings and the undercarriage. Harry was in the cockpit and there was a bit of a pall of black smoke round the engine bay, while Sirius was standing with a perplexed look on his face, staring at the engine.

"What the Hell have we missed?" he shouted.

"I'm gonna try it again, I'm sure we've got it." Harry shouted back, madly pumping at something. "Magnetos... ignition, aaaand CONTACT!"

The engine bogged, choked, coughed, spluttered, spat jets of black smoke, and failed to catch.

"Shit!" Harry snapped. "C'mon, start you bastard!"

"No good, I guess we've gotta strip it down again." Sirius said.

But Hermione was no longer really hearing either of them. Instead, her attention was absolutely riveted to the Junkers.

When she'd seen it trying to fire, something somewhere in her mind had clicked, and she felt she could see what was wrong.

She didn't really notice as she picked up a screwdriver, nor did she really notice how Harry and Sirius stared at her as she scrambled up the side of the engine and turned a screw two precise times. Nor did she notice Dudley and Petunia coming hurrying into the hanger.

"I think there was too much fuel getting into the engine." she said. "Try it again."

Harry and Sirius looked at each other for a moment, then shrugged.

"Magnetos... ignition, and, contact." Harry said, working the controls.

The plane choked, coughed, spluttered, then ROARED. Smoke and fire blasted from the exhausts as the nigh-on sixty-year-old aero-engine caught and held; Sirius whooped and yodelled, dancing around like a chimp, while Harry yelled like a maniac from the pilot's seat and experimentally gunned the engine. By this time, Petunia was slack-jawed and had her fingers jammed in her ears, while Dudley unashamedly gawped.

"Yes!" Sirius shouted "YES! IT'S ALIVE! WOOHOOHOOHOOHOO!"

"Our creation LIVES!" Harry yelled back. "THE BEAST IS ALIVE! HERMIONE, YOU RULE!"

"OHMYFUCKINGOD, THIS IS AWESOME!" Dudley bellowed.

Hermione, for her part, found herself feeling like she'd been abruptly yanked out of her body. She could see every part of the intricate cams and tappets and timing gear, every spring and screw in the carbs – superchargers whirling, the great heave as the conrods rose and fell – each and every tiniest detail spread itself out before her as she watched that great mechanical beast.

It made perfect sense. She could see how it all worked now, down to the finest details – and, somehow, she could see how it could be made better.

After enjoying himself for a few minutes, revving the massive Junkers Jumo V-12, thrilling at the way the airframe shuddered in time to his enthusiastic shoves at the battered throttle, Harry shut the old dog down, unable to restrain the maniac grin on his face – and Hermione came crashing back to herself, blinking and wondering if what she thought had happened had really happened.

"This," Sirius declared, "Calls for some celebratory beer."

"At quarter to one in the afternoon?" Petunia dubiously asked, checking her watch.

"Well, yeah. This is the first step in being able to strike back." Sirius told her.

"I suppose." she sniffed. "But don't you go getting drunk this early, there's still a lot of work left to do and we haven't got forever to get it done."

"Yes ma'am." Sirius sloppily saluted her, earning himself a mildly peeved look.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

"So," Sirius said, having taken a pull of his beer, "How'd you figure out what was wrong, Hermione?"

"It was like you just looked at it and knew." Harry added.

Hermione nodded, biting her thumb.

"I... yeah. I just, I guess it... well, it kinda sounded, um, this is really hard to describe. I just sort of heard it and saw it and it all made sense." Her nervousness abruptly vanished. "It... it was amazing... I could see how everything worked, how everything should work, and I think, I think I know how to improve it."

Sirius frowned slightly. Harry nodded.

"Ain't I always said you're brilliant?" he said. "Okay, so what've we got to change."

"I think you'd better concentrate on restoring that aircraft to the way it was first." Petunia said. "You've got to walk before you can run, don't you know."

"Well, yeah, I guess." Hermione mused. "It's just... so simple, really."

"I think it's awesome." Dudley said. "I'd forgot how loud old planes are when you're real close to them. I mean, last time I was that close to an old plane I totally threw a wobbler because it made me ears hurt, but I guess I'm more used to loud stuff now. Still awesome though."

"We're going to need to get in touch with Fred and George Weasely." Harry said.

"Eh? What for?" Sirius asked.

"The bombs." Harry told him.

"Who are they?" Dudley asked.

"Um, you remember that whole thing with your tongue? Those two. Just, you know, don't eat anything they give you."

"... err, are you sure that's safe?" Dudley asked.

"Don't worry about it, Fred and George do a lot of daft stuff like that, but none of it does anything permanent – I've seen those ton-tongue toffees go off other times and the tongues shrink back after a minute. And, well, when it comes to cooking up stuff that'll do interesting things like, say, explode when you want it to explode, they're the best." Harry told him.

"So you're gonna get them to make the bombs, right?"

"Yeah, that's the idea."

"OK, guess I'd better just not be greedy then." Dudley said, shrugging. "Hey, how about if they do anything weird to me I give 'em a smack in the gob? That works."

"Nah, they'd take that as a challenge I think. I'll just ask them to lay off the pranks."

"Okay." Dudley said, shrugging a bit. "Ey, I've got that footings dug out. Where are we gonna get the concrete?"

Petunia sighed. "I suppose I'll be hiring a mixer and trailer. I'll need you to come along, dear – I'm not really strong enough to be humping all the sacks of cement we'll need."

"That works." Harry said. "And... ah, hell. We're gonna need to get someone to go into Diagon Alley and get a whole load of Galleons converted into pounds."

"We're going to need a wizard who isn't underage or an escaped convict." Sirius said.

"Who do I know who that describes?" Harry mused. "And who won't go running straight to Fudge or Dumbledore?"

"How about Moony?" Sirius asked.

"Professor Lupin? Um, isn't he one of Dumbledore's followers?" Hermione asked.

Sirius frowned, glaring at his beer.

"We can find out, I've got Veritaserum – I nicked it off Snape. I was planning on dosing Wormtail with it when I get my hands on him, but I can always get more."

"How'll we get Professor Lupin here?" Harry asked.

"Well, we could do that the same way as you and Hermione got to those museums." Sirius told him.

"Oh, yeah... Hey, Dobby..."

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

The barn owl named Rupert was not a very happy owl.

As a Hogwarts mail owl, most of the time his life was pretty easy stuff. Sure, there was regular letters to deliver, and the occasional package to return, but an owl's got to stretch his wings, right? And anyway, your typical Hogwarts student's letters were easy work – there weren't usually any complex wards to get through, and the kids were easy to teach to give an owl a rasher of bacon or a sausage when you dropped off letters.

Generally, it was a good life; a comfortable roost, enough work to keep the old muscles in tone without being overworked like that poor sod who worked for those Weasely people, plenty of bacon and sausages, lots of good gossip from the many owls who passed through Hogwarts on a daily basis, and maybe the odd bit on the side. Postal owls throughout Europe regarded Hogwarts as a right cushy number, and up until very recently Rupert had been right there on that one.

Now he wasn't so sure. First he finds himself on the business end of one of the wards Hogwarts used to make sure any packages he delivered went via a staff desk so they could be checked for contraband, only modified so he had to stop past there before going anywhere. Then he gets beat up and sat on – actually sat on – by these mad yodelling house-elves in tin hats that keep going on about something involving 'Vrrrrroooom' and 'Budabudabuda' and 'Kaboom' and 'Neeow' and when queried by their fellow elves claim to be 'Mediating and Prayer'. Then that bleeding maniac Granger girl starts threatening to pluck him like a common chicken.

What the hell was an owl to do?

He'd tried to explain that he was just doing his job, please don't hurt me lady I only work here, but as per usual the bloody cow hadn't got the common decency to learn to understand owl so it'd been a bit like talking to a brick wall. Humans were all kinda stupid like that; at least house-elves would occasionally listen to a damn word out an honest hard-working owl's beak. That Hedwig was bound to be insufferably smug if the rumour-mill heard about this one; her and that oh-so wonderful and understanding human of hers, alright for some. It was a pity they couldn't get that scar-headed kid to train the rest of the humans in how to take notice of what an owl had to say.

All of which led him to one very obvious conclusion. There was only one thing he could possibly do, and that was make his tormentor as miserable as he currently was.

He couldn't really blame the elves, or the Granger girl. They were just reacting.

So he took great glee in eating a load of food guaranteed to give him the runs and then leaving an enormous sloppy poop right in the centre of Dumbledore's sock drawer.

-/-End Chapter-/-

Concerning the review from one 'Dreamweaver' who did not leave a reply address:

Kerrrrist. Since you can't tell the difference between a stereotypical English farmer and a Cockney, I'm not sure why I'm bothering to answer this, but...

Tongue-in-cheek? You can bet your last pair of cotton socks it's tongue-in-cheek, I'm writing a story about Dobby turning into a deranged version of Biggles, of course I've got my tongue rammed firmly into my cheek, and what with the 40kisms and farmer jokes I'm surprised my tongue hasn't come out the other side. In fact, I take pains to ram my tongue even further into my cheek every time I get inspired to write more of this.

And House Slytherin, consisting of high-born blue-bloods and the rich/influential? Are you trying to make me laugh and even if we disregard HBP and DH (which this fic does) since when the hell is a destitute half-blood orphan (Such as Tom Marvolo Riddle) high-born, rich, or influential?

Anyways, thanks as per normal to the Caer Azkaban posse for aiding and abetting, and enjoy the chapter y'all.

Oh, and 'Mediating' isn't a typo.

PS – The day I originally posted this to the Caer Azkaban group is September 15th 2009 – the 69th anniversary of the climax of the Battle of Britain.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

Doghead Out.


	5. Chapter 4

**This ain't no self-insert fic.**

**This ain't no slash fic neither.**

**This is the Book of Dobby.**

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

_"It is generally said that the British are often better at the last. They do not expect to move from crisis to crisis; they do not always expect that each day will bring up some noble chance of war; but when they very slowly make up their minds that the thing has to be done and the job put through and finished, then, even if it takes months - if it takes years - they do it."_

Prime Minister Winston Churchill,

October 29th 1941.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Remus John Lupin, who often wondered whether his parents had been a touch precognitive, was currently a very confused and worried werewolf.

Three days had passed since his best friend and his other best friend's son had vanished, and he still hadn't heard a squeak.

The squeak finally came while he was once again trying to distract himself with the little magic mirror project Sirius had set him before disappearing, though admittedly it wasn't working very well; he was too worried to really concentrate on anything else, and when a certain house-elf appeared, squatted on his desk with one foot in the inkwell, what he'd been doing went flying right out his head.

"Dobby is saying hello, Mr Reemyis Moony Lupyin sir."

The mad house-elf who followed Harry around had changed since last Remus saw him, primarily by being smartly dressed – a neatly-pressed olive green jacket and trousers with intricate detailing round the collar and lapels, a weird sort of brown leather belt that went over the shoulders as well as around the middle, brightly polished boots, and a hat with a peak at the front and a very shiny brim; he also had a peculiar and somehow threatening assemblage of metal pipes and curvy bits slung across his back on a drab green canvas strap.

"Hello, Dobby." Remus replied.

"The Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir is sends Dobby on most importyant classificated Top Secrymost mission to be brings Mr Reemyis Moony Lupyin to be seeing the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir." the house-elf continued, and grabbed Remus by the finger.

The next thing Remus knew was a weird rushing feeling accompanied by blurring in his eyes and his ears popping, and then he was falling flat on his backside.

"EEK! Oh, my poor heart – I swear I'll never get used to that!" a nasal-sounding woman complained.

"Er, Dobby." said a very welcome voice. Harry's voice.

"Yes, Mr Harry Potter Sir?" the mad elf said, saluting with both hands.

"Just, you know, for future reference, it's best to wait till people are standing up before you bring them here." Remus pushed himself half upright, and found that the last living Potter was standing beside a bench positively covered in assorted gizmos and gadgets, arm in arm with Hermione Granger; a middle-aged blonde-haired and plain as a slice of bread woman Remus vaguely recognised as Harry's aunt was the other side of the table, apparently having just put down a tray of steaming coffee mugs, and fanning herself while looking a bit faint.

"Dobby is apologyiserateses, Mr Harry Potter Sir! Dobby is not makes this very silly mistake again, Mr Harry Potter Sir! SIR!" Salute salute salute.

"... thankyou, Dobby."

"It is being Dobby's pleaserimost, SIR!" Salute.

"... Harry?" Remus asked, rubbing at his abused posterior as he sat up and found James Potter's son stood there looking at him. "Ow, ow, ow – think I landed on my tail bone."

"Tough it out, Moony." Said another very welcome voice, and quickly glancing thataway he found Sirius Black standing there. The dog animagus was leaning against an assemblage of metal slats and unidentifiable (at least, unidentifiable-to-Remus) mechanical gubbins in the vague shape of a muggle aeroplane.

"Padfoot? What's going on? Where are we?"

"Wes is not being able to be telling youse where we is being because it is being Classifycated Top Secrymost and you is not having the Clearyence to be knowing it." Dobby said, wagging a finger at Remus.

"... whaa?"

"Dobby means that where we are is need-to-know information and we're not sure if you need to know." Harry helpfully elaborated. "It depends which side you're really on."

"Harry, I'm on the side of the Light!" Remus gasped, going a bit pale and getting that horrible sinking feeling.

The next question out of Harry's mouth stopped him dead in his tracks:

"Which one?"

"What?"

"My side, or Dumbledore's side?"

"... aren't those the same thing?"

"Dumbledore's senile." Sirius said.

"... what?"

"You heard me. You know those lemon drops he's always popping? They're laced with anti-senility potions. They have been since at least the year after we got out of Hogwarts, Moony. And we both know senility can't be stopped."

"... oh, hell."

"That's what I thought." Sirius said, nodding. "And... look, either he's senile or he's almost worse than You-Know-Who. Think back, Moony. All the bad decisions he's made since before James and Lily died. Talking James into not trusting you was just the start."

"... Bad decisions?"

"If it wasn't for this Dumnuts bloke, me da would still be alive." a new voice remarked; turning that way, Remus found a heavily overweight young man carefully wheeling a cement mixer their way.

"Talking Dad into not trusting you wasn't even the start." Harry said. "He should have stopped Voldemort – oh for fuck sake, stop flinching already Hermione – before the bastard got powerful. He never should have let Hagrid take the fall for that business with the Chamber of Secrets; what kind of idiot believes a low-powered half-giant Hufflepuff is the 'True Heir of Slytherin'? He should have talked Dad into checking you two and Wormtail under Veritaserum instead of bad-mouthing someone for having an incurable disease. He shouldn't have sent me to Privet Drive, and not just because me being there got Dudley's father killed – or he should have at least checked up on me once in a while. And that's before I even got to Hogwarts. He should have guessed that someone raised as a muggle wouldn't know how to owl someone, and after the first dozen letters that didn't get a reply he should have sent someone to check – and while I'm at it, the fact that the first letter was addressed to the cupboard under the stairs should have been a hint that something wasn't quite right."

"Actually, that one's fair enough." Hermione said. "Mine was addressed to Mum's wardrobe – I was, um, dressing up in Mum's clothes."

"... what?" Harry asked, his rant derailed.

"Kids hide in cupboards from time to time." Hermione said. "And, you know, when those letters were sent we were kids and being somewhere weird is something kids do."

"I usta well like sneaking around in the attic." Dudley mused. "Me an' Piers pretended it was our space base, right, and there were aliens and stuff."

"Hermione's got a point." Sirius remarked. "Mine was addressed to 'under the kitchen table'. James's was addressed to his treehouse. They're just addressed to wherever the student is at the moment the letter's addressed – it's done by the same enchanted quill that generates the letters, right? It's been done that way for centuries. I gather they're checked over for anything alarming, but someplace a child playing hide-and-seek might be isn't counted as alarming."

"Yeah well, all that aside it took a couple hundred letters before they got a reply from me, shouldn't that have got them to take notice?" Harry snapped. "And anyway after that should he really have hid the Philosopher's Stone in a SCHOOL? Never mind that he let that twat Quirrel wander around Hogwarts for the best part of a year with Voldemort stuck on the back of his sodding head! And maybe, just maybe, he should have made sure any of the staff would take a student who managed to find out what was down there and said it was gonna be pinched SERIOUSLY, or at least, you know, find out how we knew it was there and why we thought it was gonna be pinched! Then there's second year, don't tell me that old git had no way of finding out there was a frikin' diary with a reflection of the frikin' Dark Lord in it knocking around the school, and never mind all that mess with the basilisk – and why exactly in the fuck did it take a phoenix, the Sorting Hat and a sodding twelve-year-old me to stop that sodding snake? Third year! Why in the Hell did he let the fucking Dementors board the fucking train and go around trying to smooch me? Why the fucking Hell did he LET the goddamned Dementors barge onto the sodding Quidditch pitch? Why the fucking Hell didn't he force Fudge to give Sirius the FUCKING TRIAL he never sodding had? Last year, how the Hell didn't he notice a fucking Death Eater was pretending to be one of his old friends for most of a bloody year, why the hell did he let Rita sodding Skeeter onto the sodding school grounds, why the hell didn't he notice the fucking trophy was a fucking portkey and why the hell did he force me to fucking compete when I never even fucking entered that fucking tournament anyway? FUCK!"

There was a long silence as everyone tried to digest all that; Petunia and Dudley gave each other several bemused looks, one of which clearly said that Petunia knew Harry had learned that sort of language from Dudley and there was going to be finger-wagging later.

Harry just stood there glaring at the floor and repeatedly clenching his fists.

"Hey, uh, cuz, feeling better?" Dudley suddenly asked.

"... what?" Harry asked, giving the overweight boy a sharp look.

"Y'know, letting off some steam, right? Feeling any better?"

"... actually, yeah." Harry admitted, having spent a moment considering that.

"Good." Dudley said, nodding. "It's something me coach told me, right, you don't wanna ever go into a fight angry, right, because it makes you do dumb stuff and doing dumb stuff in a fight is a good way to get the shit kicked outta you."

"And you get into a lot of fights?" Remus asked.

"Well, yeah, if you count heavyweight boxing, man. It's great stuff, like I told Harry the other day I ain't much good at stuff that ain't hitting things, and boxing means I can hit things without getting the fuzz on me. I had a go at it a while back and I really dig it, man. Been thinking about going pro, once all this is over I guess." Dudley turned back to Harry. "Look, Harr. I reckon if we're gonna be fighting a war we don't wanna go into it with you steamin' mad, right, coz we don't wanna risk you getting sloppy, right? I'm wanting to get a punchbag set up so I can keep in practise and I guess it might be an idea if you have a shot with it from time to time, it's great for working your aggro out. Hey, maybe we could make it look like this Dumbo-door dude if you like."

"That makes a lot of sense." Sirius said.

Dudley grinned, pleased at the praise, understated as it was.

"Weren't my idea, man, I'm just parroting me coach, sometimes when I'm real skelpin' mad before a match I tape a photo of whoever I'm mad at to me punchbag. It helps."

"I don't think I really should have exploded like that." Harry muttered.

"Are you nutters?" Dudley boggled. "Look, if half that stuff you were saying is what it sounds like I'm surprised you hadn't flipped your lid way back!"

"Dobby is not being suprisded that the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir is being a bit rageacious about how Mr Dumbly-Dore Sir is being very silly and naughty, Sir." Dobby put in, sounding thoughtful – a weird effect considering his squeaky voice.

"You don't have anything to apologise for, Harry." Remus agreed. "We can probably work out rational explanations for a few of those points, but, when you stack it all up together, it doesn't paint a very pretty picture."

"No; it doesn't, does it?" Harry said, sighing, "One day I'd like to ask Dumbledore all those questions, but I guess we'll deal with that when the time comes." He sighed again. "Um, Professor Lupin, so, which side are you on?"

"Yours, Harry. And, y'know, call me Remus."

"Sorry; force of habit, right?"

"So, what're we needing to get done the rest of today?" Hermione asked, turning to have a look over the half-built aeroplane; Remus noticed that the more she looked at it the more distracted and glassy-eyed she got.

"Well, for starters we need to get in touch with Fred and George." Harry said. "And I think we need to get some better way for you to get here, Hermione, than borrowing the Finch-Fletchley's floo connection all the time."

"I've got a suggestion for that." Sirius said. "Moony knows enough about runes to make a simple wardstone, and we can put an illegal floo connection between a fireplace in Hermione's house and here then cast a Fidelius over the fireplace at Hermione's."

"Hmm, a Fidelius over just a fireplace... that shouldn't be too difficult. I'll need some ward-quality granite, I know a place in Diagon Alley that sells offcuts." Remus helpfully provided. "So, what's the big plan anyway?"

Harry angled a thumb over his shoulder at the airframe. "That's a half-built Stuka dive-bomber." he said. "We're going to introduce Voldemort to twentieth century air power."

"Hey Sirius, is it possible to ward a lock against unlocking charms?" Hermione suddenly said, bringing everyone's trains of thought to a screeching halt.

"Um, I dunno, Moony?" Sirius said, looking at Remus.

"Well, yeah. But, well, why?" Remus asked Hermione.

"Because I think this end of the floo connection to my house should be inside somewhere armoured and locked." she said. "If we bury one of those containers and build a cage frame into the back of it, then have this end's floo connection inside... can we make it so you can floo here without knowing the secret of where here is?"

"Easily." Remus told her. "Me and Padfoot would have to do a bit of work on the wardstone – modify it to accept tributary stones, set up a tributary stone in the exception area, and build a ley-line to connect the two – but what you're describing is one of the oldest tricks in the book. It's usually used as a trap – it's possible to build a one-way Floo connection."

"We wouldn't need to modify the keystone." Sirius said. "It's an M-1896."

"M-1896?" Hermione pounced. "What's that mean?"

"That's Gringotts' deluxe-model heavy-duty wardstone." Remus said. "Where in Merlin's name did you get a hold of one? Those things cost a small fortune!"

"We got it at Godric's Hollow." Sirius told him. "It's the one James took as spoils after the raid on LeStrange Manor in '79."

"... oh."

"So, what does 'deluxe-model heavy-duty' mean where applied to wardstones?"

"Well, since it's the deluxe model it can take all seven circles of ward and will accept seven times seven tributary stones without a secondary hubstone, and heavy-duty is why it can ward such a large area without any booster stones." Sirius told her.

"... books!" Hermione declared, and rushed off towards the office caravan.

"Huh; looks like we've lost Hermione for the next few hours." Harry said. "Anyway, Dudley, we're gonna need those footings filled with concrete and I'm afraid we haven't got a way of getting a truck-mixer up here."

"So I'm on concrete-mixing and wheelbarrow-wheeling duty, gotcha cuz." Dudley said, nodding.

"If Mr Dudsey Sir is knows how to be being the polites, Dobby is being able to be has some elfses be helps Mr Dudsey Sir." Dobby helpfully provided.

"That'd be cool, and your mates don't gotta worry, I ain't gonna sit on me bum, I wanna convert some gut into muscle, right?" Dudley enthusiastically told the mad elf, with whom he'd become quite familiar over the last few days.

"Wait a minute." Harry said. "Dobby... just how many elves are on our side?"

Dobby spent a moment doing finger arithmetic, then popped a salute.

"There is being twuntunty-twunty-sun, ah, Dobby is being sorry for not Bigger-counts, two of the hundredses and twenty-six, elfses who is takes Mr Harry Potter Sir's Shillering and they is knowing how to be the saluting and they is has thems uniformerations and thems Stenses with Sunderatious Ammunaterions and thems is being ready to be Workses Very Hard to be Contribererteatering to the War Effortses, Mr Harry Potter Sir, SIR!" Salute.

Harry spent a long moment staring bug-eyed at Dobby, and then muttered, "... aw, man. I'm gonna have to do a speech or something."

"Sir, Yes Sir, Mr Harry Potter Sir, SIR!" Dobby declared, saluting with both hands. "Dobby is arangerating the Paradeses and Drill at once, Sir, Mr Harry Potter Sir, SIR!"

Salute, pop.

Dudley spent a moment looking at the expression Harry was now wearing, and then creased up laughing.

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**Disclaimer: Careless Wordses they is Costs Lifeses.**

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**The Holy Testament of Dobby.**

**Per Arcana ad Astra**

**A Doghead13 fanfic**

**Written & produced by Calum J 'Doghead13' Wallace**

**Preread by the CaerAzkaban Yahoo group.**

**Brought to you by Hairy Scottish Git Productions, GMBH**

**Dedicated to those incredible people who spent the best part of the 1940's saving the world – and to everyone who's followed in their footsteps since.**

**This is not a drill.**

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**Chapter 4: Dawn of the Eagle**

**(In which war is declared.)**

As he looked out at the sea of overly-solemn little faces, Harry couldn't help but make a mental note-to-self that he should never, ever, fail to take Dobby seriously again, and the same went for any other house-elves he ever met. Their pointed heads, droopy ears, squeaky voices, bowdy-legged gait and overly-long arms might seem comical, but the last few minutes had unquestionably proven to Harry, Sirius, Remus, Hermione, Dudley, Petunia and Millicent just how serious the elves were about this stuff.

Sure, the elves looked like ever so many khaki monkeys when marching in formation, courtesy of their weird gait and the simple fact that they weren't exactly brilliant in maintaining step or rank, but when they'd put on a display with those Sten guns, even Hermione had lost the slight air of condescension she'd always used to have when talking to or about house-elves.

A couple hundred pointy-eared little chaps teleporting into cover and proceeding to utterly shred the rotten trailer they'd scrounged for a practise target had rammed home just how dangerous house elves with guns could really be.

Now here he was, looking at two hundred and twenty-seven (counting Dobby) expectant little faces, all of whom thought he was going to be giving them some massively inspiring speech, and he didn't know what to say.

So he just started talking anyway, and as he opened his mouth, everything clicked.

"In this crisis, I hope I may be pardoned if I do not address you at any length today." he said. "I would say to you, as a man a lot wiser than me once said: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

"We have before us an ordeal of the most wretched kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our plan? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that any God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our plan. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."

"I do not know where this road will lead us. But I do know one thing for certain, and that is, that upon this battle depends the survival of our civilization."

"Upon it depend our own lives, and the long continuity of everything we have ever held dear. The whole fury and might of the enemy will very soon be turned on us; Voldemort knows that he will have to break us or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, our world may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted magic. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if Wizarding Britain is to last for a hundred thousand years, it will still be said that this was their finest hour."

Harry glanced around for a moment, smiling slightly.

"Let's get this show on the road."

There was a crash of booted feet as the horde of elves came to a vaguely sloppy sort of attention and, saluting wildly, chorused "Yes Sir, Mr Harry Potter Sir! Sir!"

Dobby then whirled round and fixed the elves with a firm glare.

"We is has very lots and lots and lots of work to be doing, we is needs to be being the busy elfses!" he declared. "Youse is seperateses into youse platoonses now! Wunst Platoonses, youse is helps Mr Dudsey Sir with concreteses and mixeration! Twunst Platoonses, Thrunst Platoonses, we is has the airyplane that is needs it's skinses on, youse is helpses Mr Harry Potter Sir's Miss Grangy Ma'am with the airyplane skinses because it is not being able to be drops the bombses when it is not has it's skinses on! Funst Platoonses, youse is helps Mr Seerius Padfeets Black Sir and Mr Reemyis Moony Lupyin Sir preperating the Very Importyant Defencerations of the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir's most Importyant and Classifycated Airbaseration! Finst Platoonses and Sinst Platoonses, youse is helps Mrs Dursdey Ma'am with the houseworkses and the heftses and carrieses and youse is makes this an Airbaseration that is being fit to be bears the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir's most awesome Bomberaters! Sunst Platoonses, youse is makes the bulletses for the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir's Stenses! Unst Platoonses, youse is patrollses the Diagonally Place for the Nartserys and youse is reporterates all Naughty Persons Trooperation Moverments to Winky! Ninst Platoonses, youse is with Dobby! And Wuntyest Platoonses, youse is Recruiterationing and Propergander! Youse is jumps to it now, we is not has excessivatious timeses! HUT HUT HUT!"

"We is doing these Very Importyant thingses, Dobby!" the elves all bellowed, and the whole lot vanished with a crackling string of elf-pops.

Shortly thereafter, Hermione found herself being waited for attentively by four dozen tin-hatted elves, all clustered round the half-built Stuka, while Dudley was joined in the region of the cement mixer by another forty-odd.

As for Harry, as everyone else headed off to get stuck into what they'd discussed before the Dobby-arranged parade and demonstration, he found himself alone outside the hanger.

Alone, that is, aside from Millicent, Dobby and another twenty-six elves.

"... wow." he said. "You're pretty good at organising stuff, Dobby."

Dobby saluted a couple times and declared, "Thankyou sir, Mr Harry Potter Sir, SIR!"

"So, I guess it's a matter of what all else needs done... We need to finish bulldozing the runway and taxiways, we need to get in touch with Fred and George, and, oh hell, after that I guess it's time for a buttload of research."

"Oi can work tha dozer." Millicent offered. "But markee word, it'll take more'n just dirt ter support t'bombers."

"Aw man, we're gonna need a boatload of concrete."

"Elfses is being able to arrangifies for the concreteses, Mr Harry Potter Sir. Mr Harry Potter Sir's Miss Bulstyrode Ma'am is just needs to be tells Noodle where the concreteses they is needs to be going and Noodle is has it being dealed with."

One of the other house elves stepped forwards, saluted Millicent with both hands, and declared, "Noodle is arrangifies for the concreteses, Miss Bulstyrode Ma'am!"

"Wonky, Twinky, youse is with Dobby." Dobby said. "Youse otherses youse is being with Noodle. Youse is makes with hurry now!"

"YES! DOBBY!"

"... okay, Millie – here's the bulldozer's keys." Harry said, passing them over. "And, uh, yeah, if you sort it out so the runways and everything are the same place as they were during the war, right?"

"Oi'm on it." Millie said, accepting the keys. "Orroight, lads. Ye heard tha boss, let's get on wif what's t'be done."

"Yes ma'am, Miss Bulstyrode Ma'am!" came the chorus, and the elf called Noodle was barking orders as he or she followed Millicent towards the bulldozer with a couple dozen elves trailing along behind.

"Mr Harry Potter Sir is takes noteses from the mighty Mr Rime Prinister Churcherill Sir, yes?" Dobby checked, looking thoughtful.

"Well, yeah, bits and pieces – he was good at this stuff and I'm not." Harry admitted.

"It is not mattering, they is being good words even if Mr Harry Potter Sir is not being the first who is uses them." Dobby said, shrugging.

"... I guess." Harry said, nodding distractedly.

"Maybe Mr Harry Potter Sir is writes the Communiceration for Mr Gred Wheezy Sir and Mr Forge Wheezy Sir and then Dobby is makes sure it is being deliverated and Mr Harry Potter Sir is being able to be doing stuffs with his Miss Grangy Ma'am, yes?" Dobby slyly suggested, with an if-you-know-what-I-mean elbow-nudge that Harry completely failed to understand.

"OK, hang on." Harry rooted his pad and pencil out, wrote a brief note, handed it over, and headed for the hanger.

Dobby sighed and shook his head.

"Biggers they is so silly sometimes." he muttered. "Why is the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir not sees that the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir and his Miss Grangy Ma'am they is both wants to be makes the beast what is has two backs?"

"Elfses they is not being weird enough to be tries to be works out what is goes on in headses of the Biggers." Twinky gloomily agreed, giving Dobby a commiserating clout on the shoulder.

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Neither Fred nor George Weasley was worried.

Worrying was something that happened to other people, for the main part, at least since the very few people they actually gave a damn about had come out the other end of that bloody retarded Tournament in one piece.

Sorta a shame about Cedric, right, but hell, he wasn't someone they really cared about. Just a face in the crowd, right?

Then their great and good and fuckawesome friend Harry Potter had come up and shoved a whole bundle of money in their faces with the understanding that they'd spend the bulk of it on figuring out how to blow shit up real good, and, hell, what was an honest prankster to say to that?

Okay, so most of their jokes weren't quite so lethal to the butt. But hell, the idea of a Death Eater going, 'I am a Death Eater, fear me' and then exploding was pretty damn funny, and when Harry said that chances were anyone associated with him would be a target, real soon, well, he had a point.

Enough of a point that both Gred and Forge were pretty certain that the Dork Lard would be coming after Clan Weasley real soon, and no way in or out of Hell was anyone going to pull unfunny stunts on Fred and George's family, no sir.

No fucking _way_.

That was why their dropping-out letters were already on McGonnagal's desk. That was why the prior occupant of the muggle half of their newly-leased shop had been a gunsmith, and they'd made certain to deploy carefully-targeted memory charms to the task of making sure every muggle in a position of authority was certain that Weasley & Weasley Weapons Co Ltd was properly licensed to deal in customising firearms and other things that went bang with extreme prejudice.

They'd spent the smattering of days since their slightly weird-and-scary sort-of-extra-brother hired them researching all the muggle ways of making things very dead, and so far they were unanimously impressed.

At the present moment in time, Fred was painstakingly casting a severing charm on the barrel of a gun they'd been hired to shorten, while George finished a batch of Canary Creams. Both were critically important to the reputation of their establishment; a very serious man with a moustache and a beret with a winged-sword badge had brought the gun in and remarked that depending on the quality of their work 'the regiment' might have many future jobs for them, while the batch of Canary Creams were to be distributed via Zonko's in Hogsmeade and would potentially turn one hundred Hogwarts students temporarily into squawking yellow birdies.

Fun!

It was fortunate that Fred had just finished levitating out the plug of metal that had once occupied the space for the screw that would retain the shortened G3's fore-sight, and equally fortunate that George had just set the cauldron to cool, when a house-elf in odd apparel appeared with a pop in the middle of their workshop. It meant that, when both brothers Weasley jumped out their skins, it didn't damage the work.

"Hey, Dobster, is that a gun?" George asked, recovering first.

Dobby blinked a couple of times, then started nodding wildly.

"Why yes Mr Forge Wheezy Sir, it is being Dobby's Sten Mr Forge Wheezy Sir, is that going to be of the probleration Mr Forge Wheezy Sir?"

"Nah, it's cool, especially if you use it to do something funny to someone unfunny." Fred said, waving that off and momentarily distracted by the way Dobby could (unlike everyone of the not-a-house-elf persuasion) tell which twin was which.

"Such as Lucius bloody Malfoy, he needs his head inverted for what he tried to do to Gin-Gin." George added, obviously also briefly contemplating the same important question.

"So anyway," Fred put in.

"What's the what?" George asked.

"The Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir is needs someones to be builds the bombses what is rains down the fury and explodey wraths on the headses of the very naughty persons what is tries to make the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir very very very sad." Dobby stated, nodding firmly,

"Well, yeah." George said.

"We'd got that much." Fred added.

"But we can't find Harry." George put in.

"And we need to know sizes and so on." Fred provided.

"Because a too-small explosion isn't funny enough." George concluded.

"Dobby is having a Very Importyant Communicerification for Mr Gred Wheezy Sir and Mr Forge Wheezy Sir." Dobby said, producing an envelope and sounding very solemn. "It is being from the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir, and peoples who is not being Mr Gred Wheezy Sir and Mr Forge Wheezy Sir is not being allowed to be reading it because it is being Classificatered Top Secreymost."

"OK." the two brothers chorused, simultaneously accepting the letter; they then simultaneously opened it, one from each end, pulled it out, unfolded it, and began to read.

"Dear Fred and George..." George said.

"Egroeg nad Derf Raid..." Fred added.

"Sorry about the unusual way you received this," George read,

"Shit deviser buoy yaw lasagne et tuba yarrows," Fred put in,

"Oh shut up Fred."

"Derf pun thus ho... wait a minute, it doesn't say that!"

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By dinner time, the Stuka was looking very Stuka-like; there was still a lot of work to be done around tuning the engine and controls, and the wheels were still bare rims sitting on axle stands, and the cannons were yawning holes in the old plane's wings, but all the heavy stuff was done – only the fiddly bits were left, and Hermione was adamant that they didn't have the parts to finish those fiddly bits. She'd gone oddly intense over it all, even more so than usual, and Harry had regarded it as a joy to behold; he hadn't seen her get so intent on a task since second year when she was brewing that polyjuice potion.

She'd undertaken a twelve-minute rant about the benefits of cladding an aircraft's frame in dragon-hide. The rant had contained a lot of terms Harry didn't quite get the meaning of, things about drag coefficient and radar profile and durability and aetheric conjunctionality, all sorts of important-sounding stuff that rather went over his head, but he knew Hermione and he knew that if Hermione thought it was important she likely had a damn good reason for it; they were as far as they could get without the supplies she was adamant they must have.

Elsewhere on the airbase, Dudley had proudly declared the concrete slab for the replacement hanger fully poured, shored off from rain getting into it, and just waiting for the concrete to cure, while Petunia had found to her immense surprise that she enjoyed the assistance of a dozen helpful, skilful and attentive house elves. Remus and Sirius had finished up the preparation work for the installation of the private Floo to Hermione's house, a part of which involved Remus having to be told the secret of where the airbase was – in the process causing both he and Hermione to take careful note that he hadn't realised the fact he was inside of a Fidelius until he saw it's control patterns illuminated in the ward-stone's rune clusters – and were now just needing some supplies from Gringotts, while Millicent had the runway up to scratch and ready to dispatch aircraft.

This, they decided over steaming platefulls of shepherd's pie laid on by a broadly smiling Mrs Bulstrode, led to one obvious conclusion, especially when Hermione started muttering something about the aerodynamic performance of dragonhide; before much of any of the work could go any further, a visit to Diagon Alley was paramount, and not just to get some cash out the bank; according to Hermione they needed enough square metreage of dragonhide to cover the entire exterior of the Stuka, and Remus and Sirius needed a cubic foot of ward-quality granite in four-cubic-inch segments before they'd be able to go any further with the ward-configuration, and that'd not mentioning the portal-quality grey-green brimstone needed to set up the Floo connections OR the spell-proof iron bars needed to partition the container Millie had spent a good part of the afternoon burying.

"So, Mr Harry Potter Sir, what is the Great Wizard Mr Harry Potter Sir needs everyones to be being does?" Dobby asked, having carefully licked the latest forkful clean – he didn't want to waste a single molecule of this wonderful foodses.

"Well, we're about as far as we can get without getting hold of money." Harry said, then spent a moment rooting around in his trouser pockets, from which he eventually withdrew his Gringotts key; this he deposited on the table right beside Hermione. "You're going to need to head through to Diagon Alley, Hermione – I mean, pity's sake, you keep rejecting parts that I thought were fine, and when we ran that ultrasonic thingy over them they turned out to be full of tiny cracks, so I guess you'll be a better judge of if materials are the best we can get, right? And from what Professor Lupin said earlier, there's people out looking for me all over the Wizarding World so I guess I'd better stay holed up here – hey, talking of which, maybe you should go to Diagon Alley too, Professor Lupin, seeing as how you're the best we've got at wards and stuff."

"That's Remus, Harry." Remus said. "And shouldn't you be going with Hermione, let us old codgers mind the farm? It'd do you good to get off the base for a while."

"Nah, I'm good – hey, it's not like I'm cooped up in a cupboard, is it?" Harry said, causing Petunia to wince; he gave her an apologetic look, leaving her highly confused. "I mean, I get easily enough time out and about when we're going to the museums and such – we've got plenty more planes I reckon we need a look at, and we need a way to get over to America, there's stuff at the National Aerospace Museum I want a look at and, y'know, I reckon we could learn something by having a look over the biggest aeroplane ever."

Hermione's eyes started gleaming weirdly. "The Hughes H-4, right?"

"Yeah, the Spruce Goose." Harry confirmed.

"Don't call her that! Howard Hughes was a genius and he deserves respect!" Hermione snapped, sounding almost like she'd been physically struck. "If he'd know all the figures – if he'd known about magic – that plane would have flown perfectly! It's only because the engine technology of the day wasn't up to the task that she couldn't really fly!"

"Sheesh, sorry, didn't know it meant so much to you..."

"... s'okay. I just, you know, it doesn't feel right calling the creations of such a genius by such a... I dunno, such a demeaning name."

"OK, so it's the H-4. Anyway, if you head over to Diagon Alley with Pr- with Remus and get the supplies we're needing, I'll see if I can get those control wires sorted out – I'm sure I've worked out what's up."

"What about the rest of us, Harry?" Sirius asked, sounding amused.

"Well, um, until we've got more supplies in I'm not sure what needs done yet. Maybe you guys could start getting set up to frame the new hanger, and maybe start looking at ways to hang more bombs off the Stuka?"

"Harry, are you sure you don't want to come to Diagon Alley? I mean, it's your money."

"Nah, it's cool Hermione – I mean, I trust you, right?" Harry's attention drifted off of the subject of Diagon Alley. "Aw, man. We're going to need someone who can fly a Stuka."

"Dobby is being able to be fixes that, Mr Harry Potter Sir, Sir!" the elf chirped up.

"How so?" Hermione asked.

"Dobby is reads about the Simlyuraterors in the bookses, Miss Grangy Ma'am." Dobby told her. "And Dobby is thinks that elfses is being able to be uses the Come-And-Go-Room as the Simlyurateror, yes?"

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

"Remus, it would be better if Harry went himself," Hermione grumbled as she paused to check the coast was clear. "It's his money after all. And he needs to get away from the base from time to time, and not just to go trawling through museums for designs. We could just disguise him."

Remus smiled slightly at the way Hermione kept fretting about Harry – ahh, young love and all that. "Well, considering how he kept over-riding every argument you came up with, I doubt I'd be able to change his mind; you know the way he gets. Besides, it's just a short trip to Gringotts."

"I don't like Gringotts," Hermione grumbled, "I was there with Mum and Dad just a couple times and the goblins always looked at me like ... like I don't know what." She paused and added with a grimace, "And they all keep sniffing at me."

"Well, goblins have a superb sense of smell, they knew I was a werewolf as soon as I was within about a hundred yards upwind of them. Maybe they just don't like your soap?"

"I guess, but... look, I got the idea that goblins are usually pretty rude so how come as soon as they'd got done sniffing at me and giving me weird looks they came over all polite? And, y'know, I think just about every goblin in Gringotts must've eyeballed me." They came onto the broad steps that led up to the bank's door, and Hermione clammed up. The goblin guards at the doors were by this time looking straight at her with large eyes and unreadable expression.

"See!" she hissed.

Remus didn't reply, instead nodding once as the doors closed behind them. He couldn't say he'd ever seen goblins react to someone like that before.

"Dot's de gurl again, de vun dot schmells verra nize. Do ve tell de Serzhant?" one of the guards asked the other, sotto voiced.

"Nah. He say dey vill know vitout us."

"Dot's goot. Generals say dere be big fightink soon... Ve need to gets out uf diz guardink doty. Hyu tink if ve keel a coople uf vizards dey pot us in de fightink units?"

"Dot's de kind uf plan dot ends op vit de vhole bank in flames, everyvun dead und hyu loose hyur hat, hyu eediot! Vot hef Hy told hyu about makink dot sort uf plan?"

"... henny plan vere hyu loose hyur hat iz a bad plan?"

"Yas! A verra bad plan!"

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Millicent Bulstrode sighed to herself and glanced at her watch. It was a pretty battered old thing, but it still kept time so she'd probably keep using it until it didn't.

She'd been waiting outside the farmhouse in one of the farm Land-Rovers since Hermione and Remus (who she still found herself thinking of as Professor Lupin) left for Diagon Alley, so as to be able to give them and their purchases a lift back up to the airbase. They'd left nearly two hours ago; she wasn't worried, they wouldn't be overdue for another hour, but she was most definitely bored.

Just as she was thinking she should have found something in the kitchen to occupy herself until they got back, they emerged from the house, locked in an animated discussion.

"... tertiary rune set. I think it'd be do-able." Remus said, depositing his armload of shopping in the back of the Land-Rover.

"Isn't there any way of making it, I dunno, more user-friendly than just a mess of runes that might or might not glow?" Hermione asked.

"... like what?"

"Well, when you come over to my house to install that Floo I'll show you my computer. It's only an Atari ST, but it works just fine and it'll give you an idea what I'm talking about. I mean, from your description a ward-stone is very like a magical computer, right? Only there's no way available of making it easy to use."

"I'll take your word for it." Remus said, chuckling and shaking his head.

"Well, it's about the closest comparison I can think of." Hermione told him as they scrambled into the Landy's front bench seat. "I mean, a computer can't affect the real world so directly – well, apart from when you use it to control a robot, I guess."

"Hermione, I have absolutely no idea what these muggle terms you keep coming out with mean." Remus admitted.

"Of course not, nobody ever taught you." Hermione said with a shrug.

"It's not like that stuff was ever really important." Remus said.

"Muggles is bludy important, y'know." Millicent remarked.

"In what ways?" Hermione asked.

"Where'd ye think wizards get most o' their eats?" Millicent asked.

"... I, well, hadn't really thought about it." Remus admitted.

"I suppose that makes sense; there aren't many wizards who'd 'deign' to, you know, do a real day's work." Hermione mused.

"Tis kinda disconcertin' sometimes, when ye stop an' think, an' ye know they'd barely notice iff'n we all vanished, but we'd be stufft iff'n they were to go." Millicent said, nodding gloomily. "T' 'Ogwarts Express, t'rails it runs on, them's t'same rails t'muggles run their trains on an' t'aint t'wizards who maintain 'em. T'food we eat, t'drinks we drink, t'parchment we write ann, t'cloth fer our clothes, t'candles we read by – 'tis all muggle-made. Time was, we were t'ones doin' t'inventin', twas wizards first made t'bow an' t'sword, but that time's many's t'year gone. Twas t'gunpowder that did it, aye, and t'flintlock. Time was, t'only muggles what could stand aginst us were t'archers; t'crossbow begun t'change an' t'gun finished it. A fine archer must train longer'n we train our magic; a fine gunner can train in months. Twas t'gun that made this world t'muggles' world, an' twas t'gun that made us hide in t'shadows. Tis why t'troubles with t'Dark Lords only begin in countries like this an' Japan, countries that won't let t'citizens carry t'guns. Here in Britain, a street full o' t'muggles is defenceless if t'wizards show up; in places lak Africa or Switzerland, t'wizard what done same as Ye-Know-Who'd be blown to bits."

"Harry believes the time for division between the muggle world and the Wizarding World is over." Hermione said.

"What do ye believe, then?" Millicent asked, addressing it to both of them.

"I don't know what I believe... yet." Hermione said. "But, if what you're saying is true, and wizards get all their food and such-like from muggles... shouldn't we be giving something back?"

Millicent nodded.

"Tis what my grand-da says." she said. "T'question is... what?"

"Good question." Remus muttered.

Hermione didn't reply.

Instead, she looked up at the evening sky, to where the moon was visible and beyond, out to the first stars of the gathering night – and she dared to dream.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

The next morning, Remus and Sirius having sat up half the night putting the necessary minor ward-stones together, the greying-haired werewolf headed down to the farm so as to floo over to the Finch-Fletchleys and, via that household, make his way to the Grangers'.

An hour and a half later, Harry was just getting set up to mark out the sections of dragon-hide that would eventually cover the Stuka's entire frame when Hermione came zooming into the hanger in a state of high excitement, accompanied by a somewhat frazzled Remus, who at once diverted to the caravan they'd taken to referring to as the mess, partially because it was used as a mess in the dining facility sense and partially because the interior was threatening to become, simply put, an incredible mess.

"Morning, Hermione." Harry said.

"I was right, Harry, a ward-stone IS a magical computer and I think I've worked out how to give it a proper display and a better interface and Remus thinks it'll work but I'm going to need lots and lots of parts and I think I'll have to make most of them!" Hermione declared, in a tone of high excitement.

"Hermione. Morning." Harry repeated, somewhat taken aback. In response to this, Hermione went entertainingly pink.

"Morning, Harry." she squeaked, decidedly embarrassed, and then went even pinker as he started laughing at her. "Stop laughing at me, Harry James Potter!"

"Sorry, sorry, it's just it's fun making you go pink like that." Harry said, immediately causing her to go bright pink again.

"That's not fair!" she complained, ineffectually slapping at his chest.

"Hermione," he caught her wrists, "C'mon, Hermione, I'm just..."

"Just trying to embarrass me?" she snapped, trying to pull her hands free, only to make him lose balance.

A crash and squeak later, she was flat on her back on the pile of dragon-hide with him on top of her and their noses nearly touching.

Hermione was then treated to the sight of Harry going luridly red and, gabbling apologies, jumping off her as if she'd been hot enough to scorch him.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

"Man, he's gone on her and he ain't even figured it out." Dudley said, shaking his head as he leant on his shovel.

"Why is Mr Harry Potter Sir not realises, Mr Dudsey Sir?" Wonky asked, pausing, his shovel piled with sand.

"Aw, it's always the people who're gone on each other who take longest to figure it out." Dudley explained, shrugging. "I dunno why, I guess it's coz that's the sort of stuff what only looks simple from the outside."

"Uh, Wonky is not wants to be sounds disrespectreferl," the hunch-backed elf said, sotto voiced, "But it is being a bit, well, patheteric really."

"Kinda, yeah, but they'll figure it out sooner or later." Dudley told him. "I mean, I reckon the best thing we can do to help is keep our gobs shut and not screw it up for 'em, I ain't much good at that boy-girl stuff and, y'know, from the stuff you've said I guess it's different for you elves, right?"

"Well yes, Mr Dudsey Sir, elfses is being pretty operan about when elfses is wants to be makes the beast what is has two backs." Wonky admitted, heaving the shovelful of sand into the cement mixer. "Youse Biggers, youse is makes a thing what is meant to be being very simple most complycerated."

"That's us humans for ya, Wonky. You elves might make mistakes now and then, but to really fuck things up you need a human." Dudley said, adding a slosh of water. "I guess it's even more complicated for my cousin and that Hermione bird, right, because they're best mates and neither of them wanna risk losing their best friend over this stuff, right? I mean, you'd be better asking Sirius this stuff because he's good at it and I ain't – Mr Never Been Kissed, that's me – but I've heard there's all sorts of ways people can get hurt over that stuff, I'm not meaning bleeding or bruises type hurt, I'm meaning hurt in the brain."

"So it is being sykerlodgikeral, yes?"

"Yeah, somethin' like that."

"Wonky is not wants to be sounds direspecterferl, but youse Biggers is being crazy."

Dudley burst out laughing.

"We think that too, Wonky. We think that too."

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Putting the tyre on the Stuka's tail-wheel was almost a ceremonial moment, or it would have been if Harry hadn't found himself and Hermione lowering the plane's tail off the jack, sitting back, and suddenly realising there was nothing left to do.

"... wow." Harry finally said.

"Yeah." Hermione said, taking a step back to survey the Stuka. "I... it's finished, Harry."

"Yeah. Finished." Harry agreed, taking a step back to stand beside her. "I... wow. It's finished."

"Yeah, finished." Hermione told him.

Suddenly, Harry was running hell-for-leather out of the hanger, Hermione only half a stride behind him, both of them yelling, "HEY! YOU LOT COME AND LOOK! THE STUKA'S FINISHED!" at the top of their lungs.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

The Junkers Ju-87 'Stuka' dive-bomber is not the most attractive machine ever to fly.

A crank-winged brute with weird spatted undercarriage, a square tail, a peculiar maw-like appendage under the nose and a malproportioned canopy, it is, in fact, plug-ugly.

The Stuka standing in the rickety aircraft hanger on the airbase at the back of Long Wall Farm wasn't made any prettier by the pair of 37mm-calibre BK 3.7 guns in bulbous pods underneath it's wings – a configuration originally adopted by the Luftwaffe for anti-tank use – or the somewhat mismatched RAF-style bomb shackles inboard of the cannons.

But the old plane didn't need to be beautiful and it didn't need to be in original configuration. Just by sitting there with it's hunched-up posture, it told the seven humans (and over two hundred elves) who were considering it that yes, they really could do this.

In a little under a week, they had turned a bare idea into a fully-functional warplane, waiting to unleash a heaping helping of death and destruction on their enemies.

"Wow." Dudley said, breaking the silence as he strode forwards and spent a moment poking at the Stuka, as if checking it was real, which in fact he was. "This is awesome."

"Isn't it just?" Hermione agreed, joining the overweight lad by the Stuka's port wing. "Oh wow – we've really done it..."

"Y'know, Harry, you were right – this out-awesomes motorbikes." Sirius said, peering quizzically into the Stuka's air intake. "I'd love to be a fly on the wall when this baby shoots up Voldie's hideout."

"Well, we've got a few bits and pieces to cover before we can do that." Harry said, spending a moment stroking the Stuka's spinner. "We're going to need a whole shedload of bullets for the Flak 18's and those machine guns, and a bomb for each wing. And I think we'd be better to have Dobby practise a few times before he actually bombs something for real."

Dobby nodded thoughtfully and, having paused to swallow the lump in his throat, chimed in with his agreement. "Dobby is not wants to be wastes Mr Harry Potter Sir's bombses."

"So... want to try taking this ugly brute up then, Dobby?"

"... Oh yes Sir, Mr Harry Potter Sir! Dobby is wants to be takes Mr Harry Potter Sir's most magnifycent and gloryactious Stuka up lots and lots and lots, Mr Harry Potter Sir, Sir!"

"Okay. Well, once you're confident you can fly her and land her okay, and once the concrete we filled the practise bombs with sets, you can start practise bombing – we'll get a practise target set up somewhere up on the top of the dale." Harry gestured vaguely in the direction of the hills behind the farm. "In the meantime, we need avgas. Lots of avgas."

"Dobby is being able to be arrangerates the aviateron gasolerine, Mr Harry Potter Sir, Sir!"

"As for the rest of us... Hermione, Sirius, Remus... we have the plans. We can get the parts and the materials. I think we should build ourselves a Hawker Hurricane."

"Why not a Spitfire?" Hermione immediately wanted to know.

"Oh come on, Hermione. You heard that lovely old man – the Hurricane's the plane that really won the Battle of Britain, and I think we should have one. And besides," he gave her a conspiratorial wink, "When we try for a Spit, we'll be putting a Griffon engine into her – and we need to practise at making Merlins for the Lancasters, don't we?"

That immediately put the gleam back in Hermione's eyes.

"Oh yes..." she said, gleefully rubbing her hands together and stifling a slightly maniacal-sounding giggle. "Oh yes, practise, we need lots and lots of practise, oh yes..."

-/-**End Chapter**.-/-

AN – Well, especially considering that the only scene I had pre-written following the one with Hermione and Remus outside Gringotts was the sequence with Millie talking about what the 'muggle world' does for wizards, that took a lot less time than I thought. Thanks as per usual to the denizens of the Caer Azkaban Yahoo group for aiding and abetting.

'Serzheant' lack a little thingy above the A, but it's roughly-Russian for 'Sergeant'. Oh, and in case you haven't been keeping up, The Book of Dobby is now officially a Girl Genius crossover.

Jaeger-speak produced by tweaking output from the Jaegermonster Translator at /~

Note that the usage of 'square metreage' and 'cubic foot' within the same paragraph is entirely intentional – within this fic, Wizarding Britain primarily uses the Imperial system, but most of Wizarding Europe used the metric system. Dragon-hide, a material cultivated primarily in Romania, is sold by the square metre; ward-granite, a material mined primarily in Britain, is sold by the cubic inch.

The system of platoon numbers Dobby used is based on a gibberish method of counting I came up with a hell a long time ago because I was annoyed with the inconsistent way one, two, three etc works especially around that whole 'eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen' thing and the whole switch to 'twenty-one, twenty-two' etc; why isn't ten onety? Wouldn't that make more sense?

Anyway, it was designed to be entirely consistent throughout while sounding very silly and screwing with people's heads by being carefully-structured incoherent gibberish.

From 0-9 it goes: Nun, wun, twun, thrun, fun, fin, sin, sun, un, nin.

'Tun' and 'Wunty' both mean 10, but tun is only used as part of a compound such as tunty (100) or wuntytunty (1000) because it sounds more convincing (and less confusing) than wuntywunty or wuntywuntywunty.

(ahem.)

From 10-20 it goes: Wunty, wunty-wun, wunty-twun, wunty-thrun, wunty-fun, wunty-fin, wunty-sin, wunty-sun, wunty-un, wunty-nin, twunty. Note that tun-wun etc sound wrong.

The pattern then repeats;

30 is thrunty

40 is funty.

50 is finty

60 is sinty

70 is sunty

80 is unty

90 is ninty

And 100 is tunty.

110 is tunty-wunty

111 is tunty-wunty-wun.

120 is tunty-twunty

etc

200 becomes twuntunty.

210 is twuntunty-wunty

300 thruntunty

etc

1000 becomes wuntytunty

2000 twunwuntytunty

10,000 is wuntytuntunty. Wuntywuntytunty and tuntuntunty are technically correct but don't sound right.

There is a specific word for 1,000,000,000; this is fuckloads. 2,000,000,000 is twunfuckloads.

... and so on.

Multiple zeros can be said by a number word followed by nun; for example, 000 become thrun-nun.

If you're talking year numbers, the compiled words are never used beyond 2-digit; for example, 1863 is wunty-un sunty-thrun, and 2009 is twunty nun-nin; 2020 will be twunty twunty, and 1146 was wunty-wun funty-sin. The year ten thousand will be wun nun nun nun nun, which can also be said wun fun-nun, a lame pun that partially inspired this entire system of counting.

Note that this system includes a number that is more nothing than zero; this number is Nunty, meaning VERY nothing. Any normal number prefaced with 'Nunty' becomes a negative number; for examply, nunty-twunwuntytunty-nintunty-wunty-twun is negative 2912. Nunty itself, however, can be used in conversation as a very emphatic way of saying 'Nothing'; for example,

"Bob, what are you doing?"

"Nunty!"

means Bob's denying doing anything more emphatically than if he'd said, 'Nothing' or even 'Fuck all'

Yes, it is very very silly indeed. In my defence, I was drunk.

-/-/-

Motherfucker is this late. I finished this chapter in October '09 and thought I'd uploaded it on the spot.

Apparently, I hadn't. Fuck up I did.

So yeah, better late than never.

Doghead Out.


End file.
